62 GLIMPSES OF INDIAN BIRDS 



it, is not adequate compensation for the lack of the 

 red waistcoat. It is not so much what one wears 

 as the way in which one wears things that matters. 

 To wear brown boots with light-coloured clothes is 

 no offence against good taste, althoug'h at one time 

 the undergraduates at Pembroke College, Cambridge, 

 were not allowed to wear brown boots in chapd ; 

 but to don this description of footwear simultaneously 

 with a frock coat is a sin that is likely to be visited 

 upon the children — ^I was about to say — ^unto the 

 fourth generation, but in this horrid, democratic, 

 Lloyd-Georgian age I think it would be more correct 

 to say " unto the second generation." Nor is this 

 the only point of inferiority of the Indian robin. 

 Although he is by no means a poor singer, he is not 

 nearly so brilliant a performer as his British cousin. 



Then again, the Indian robin has not the confidential 

 manners of the English species. Often when I have 

 been sitting in an English garden, has a robin come 

 and perched on the arm of my chair, an example 

 which his Indian counterpart has never shown the 

 sUghtest inchnation to foUow. In England the robin 

 is a semi-domesticated bird ; in India, although a 

 pair often take up their abode in the compound, 

 robins prefer to dwell " far from the madding crowd." 

 If the truth must be told the Indian species love not 

 the shady garden. The cool orchard has no attractions 

 for them. They abhor the babbling brook. Their 

 idea of an earthly paradise is a brick-kiln, a railway 

 embankment, or a flat, rocky, barren, arid piece of 

 land. Aloes and prickly pear are their favourite plants. 



