10 



surface of it), — grey at the root, where the down is, — tinged, and 

 only tinged, with red at the part that overlaps and is visible ; so 

 that, when three or four more feathers have overlapped it again, 

 all together, with their joined red, are just enough to give the 

 colour determined upon, each of them contributing a tinge. 

 Innumerable are the tales told of Robins especially bearing on three 

 points, their tameness, familiarity, and friendliness with man, their 

 pugnacity with other birds in general and with their own species 

 in particular, and the remarkable sites chosen for their nests. I 

 will just mention some of these sites. A hole in the mizen mast 

 of the Victory made by a cannon ball ; a myrtle in the hall of a 

 house, this being stopped ; the cornice of the drawing room, this 

 being stopped ; a new shoe on a shelf in the drawing room, this 

 being nearly completed was removed by the owner of the shoe to 

 an old shoe, after which' the nest was finished, the eggs laid and 

 duly hatched. A shelf in a pantry amongst bottles, the pantry 

 being visited once or twice every day when the bird would only fly 

 on to the floor ; the head of a shark in a museum. The festoons 

 of curtains in a dining room. A pigeon-hole bookshelf in a school 

 constantly frequented by seventy children. The large Bible on the 

 reading desk of the parish church of Hampton in Warwickshire. 

 A similar place in Collingbourne, Kingston Church, Wiltshire, the 

 cock bird feeding its young during service. A letter box on a gate 

 post, &c. &c. There is a popular error that the cock robin alone 

 has a red breast, but the fact is that the plumage of the two sexes 

 is practically alike. 



The Sparrow, Passer domesticus, is the proverbial figure of com- 

 monness and worthlessness, and yet it is a very interesting bird. 

 Not nearly so trim or brightly coloured as the robin, not usually so 

 friendly, with no pretty song, yet the sparrow has many interest- 

 ing ways, and we should speedily miss him if he failed to frequent 

 our gardens and streets. The town birds suffer much in their 

 plumage from the smoke and frequent contact with chimneys and 

 bricks and mortar in general, but when the young birds have just 

 attained to their brightest full-grown colouring, they are by no 

 means the dingy sombre, ragged and torn specimens that so often 

 come for our crumbs in winter, the head, neck, and wings have 

 many fine and various shades of brown, making prettily curved 

 and variously shaped figures from the head to the tail. Many an 

 invalid in bed has been cheered by our untidy and smoky little 

 friends chirping and feeding on an out of the way window sill 

 which rarer birds will not frequent. The following quotation is I 

 think very discriminating : — " Wherever this bird is met with, his 

 character is much the same — bold, pert, and familiar ; mstead of 

 the gentle and pleasing confidence displayed towards the human 

 race by the Bed breast, the Nightingale, the Kedstart, and some 



