222 NATURAL HISTORY READER. 



the seasons round the globe, should learn the art of making 

 happy homes ; yet what housekeeper will not hang her 

 head in shame and despair to see this nice adaptation of 

 use to wants, shown each year in multitudes of nests ? 

 Now, only look at it ! always just room enough — -none to 

 spare. First, the four or five eggs lie comfortably in the 

 small round at the bottom of the nest, with room enough 

 for the mother-robin to give them the whole warmth of 

 her broad, red breast, her sloping back and wings making 

 a rain-proof roof over her jewels. Then the callow young- 

 lings raise a little higher into the wider circle. Next the 

 fledglings brim the cup ; at last it runs over ; four large, 

 clumsy robins nutter to the ground with much noise, much 

 anxious calling from papa and mamma — much good advice, 

 no doubt. 



7. They are fairly turned out to shift for themselves ; 

 with the same wise, unfathomable eyes which have mir- 

 rored the round world for so many years, which know all 

 things, say nothing older than time, lively and quick as to- 

 day ; with the same touching melody in their long, monoto- 

 nous call ; soon with the same power of wing ; next year 

 to build a nest with the same wise economy, each young 

 robin carrying in his own swelling, bulging breast the model 

 of the hollow circle, the cradle of other young robins. So 

 you see it is a nest within a nest — a whole nest of nests. 

 Like Vishnu Saima's fables, or Scheherazade's stories, you 

 can never fhid where one leaves off and another begins, 

 they shut so one into the other. No wonder the children 

 and philosophers are they who ask whether the egg comes 

 from the bird, or the bird from the egg. Yes, it is a world- 

 circle, a home-circle — this nest. 



8. You remember that little, old, withered man who 

 used to bring us eggs. The boys, you know, called him 

 Egg-Pop. When the thrifty housewife conrplained of the 

 small size of his ware, he always said, " Yes, marm, they 



