1879] Rob: A Bird Biography. 361 
In their plays how our children anticipate the cares and ways of 
motherhood—the nursing and the dressing of the doll, the make- 
believe keeping house, etc. A hundred times have I seen cage 
birds go through a “ dumb show ” of mimic nesting, fussing with 
laborious concern over a feather, or stick, or straw, or hair. I 
have seen Rob running about his cage with a bit of straw in his 
mouth, and uttering a conceity twitter, as if he were in live 
earnest, and saying to a supposable partner in the business: 
“ Here, Mrs. Rob, is just the thing you want.” 
If one wanted to get Rob ona string, it was enough to give 
him, in technical parlance, the proximal end of a bit of grocer’s 
cord, reserving to one’s self a hold on the distal end. How per- 
severingly the bird would draw the cord into the cage, and with 
system too. Seizing it with its bill an inch or two would be 
drawn in, and a foot put on it, then a little more pulled in and 
held in place in like manner, and so on until the other end was 
reached. Now the fun began. Gently the coil was drawn from 
under the bird’s foot; this would bother Rob, for though he was 
pretty fair on practical reasoning, he could not take a step in the 
abstract. With quickened energy he would go the thing all over 
again ; and again he would find his labor slipping from under his 
feet. This at last would excite a spurt of temper, and the thing 
would be given up in disgust. 
Owners of cage pets do not always reflect that birds of the 
Passerine group are the most delicately organized ; hence they 
are often irritable. Coues has well called them fast livers, they 
so freely consume oxygen. Rob hada high temper. A trick, 
perhaps unwise but really amusing, was sometimes played on the 
bird. A bit of rubber or elastic cord was tied to one of the wires 
of the cage. Rob would seize it in his bill and pull, though but 
an inch long, the bird’s efforts would stretch it to a number of 
inches, when just as he was pulling the hardest, it would fly back 
again, and Rob, to his dismay, would be set back too, with a 
recoil that fairly lifted him off his legs, and over his tail back- 
ward. In the matter of experience the bird never learned at the 
first lesson, but would keep on meeting the same mishaps, until 
badly beaten with his own petard, he would give it up as a 
job. 
There may not be much dignity in it, but the boy does find 
some enjoyment in running backwards and forwards by a picket 
