THE "AMERICAN EOBIN. 
Ill 
readers, though they belong to families also represented in Great 
Britain. Why it is we know not, but the American species generally 
display a liveliness and an ingenuity in which our own are deficient. 
Perhaps this difference is due to the difference of locale. In England 
excessive cultivation has brought down everything to the level of com- 
monplace. The wider area and the greater freedom of America enable 
the birds to retain their characteristic vitality; though a rapidly 
advancing civilization may be expected to tame, limit, and oppress 
them there in turn, as it has done in the " old country." It is necessary 
to add, however, that a considerable proportion of the American 
birds are migratory, and, like several of our British species, dis- 
appear at the approach of winter. Such is the case with the 
beautiful purple martin, which in the month of May adventurously 
pushes northward to the very borders of the great Frozen Ocean. 
He is a great favourite with the American people, as Hawthorne 
somewhere remarks. In the villages and farms they prepare accom- 
modation for him as the epoch of his annual avatar draws nigh ; 
and an American would as soon shoot one of these little familiar 
creatures as an Englishman would shoot a robin. Like his half- 
cousin, the king-bird, he is the terror of crows, hawks, and eagles, 
which he attacks on all occasions with the greatest alacrity of spirit, 
and with so much of the Jack-the-giant-killer audacity and persever- 
ance, that he invariably puts them to flight. This is a fact well 
known to the poultry and the lesser birds, though how they have 
learned it we do not pretend to explain, — unless, indeed, they possess 
some power of association of ideas, — and whenever they hear by the 
shrill impetuous cry of the martin that he has sallied forth to the 
combat, they hasten out of harm's way, leaving the chivalrous little 
hero to win his victory as best he can. 
Not inferior to him in warrior-qualities is the American shrike 
or butcher-bird, which is also to some extent a spring and autumn 
migrant. There is little if any expi'ession in a bird's face, generally 
speaking; yet we fancy that the butcher-bird has an expression 
of pugnacity, such as might be traced in the countenance of the 
late Lord Palmerston. He has a sharp, powerful beak, a broad 
