BEES AND BUTTERFLIES AT KE IV 53 
demise he was absent for the best part of three days ; then he 
returned bringing Cherry, who since that day has been his 
constant companion. Cock robins are never very friendly, and 
least of all towards spring ; but Cherry, though slightly mottled 
on the head, and with the duller tints that are usual to the 
female bird, has a loud, clear, masculine song. He or she 
became immediately tame, apparently on Ruby’s affidavit ; but 
in robin-taming it is emphatically le pvemiey pas qni coiitc, and in 
a garden with several tame robins even wild ones will now 
and then drop down into the hand that offers cheese. 
A notable quality in these robins is their extraordinary 
power of compelling you to see them by merely looking at you. 
Bien-Aime resembles the Ancient Marriner in his ability to 
hold you “ with his glittering eye ” ; and when walking with 
my sister in the garden and not for the moment thinking of her 
feathered pets, Raggie has drawn the attention of one or other 
of us, at a distance of three or four feet, by the mere force of 
her gaze, though she herself was quite screened by a broad laurel 
leaf. 
To the scientific naturalist this intercourse with robins will 
doubtless seem frivolous ; and far be it from me, who have no 
more science than enables me to spell the word correctly, to 
offer advice to my betters ; but the humble lover of nature, 
whose eyes inform his heart rather than his intellect, cannot 
but be imbued with what Mr. Ruskin calls the “ Franciscan 
Spirit,” and to such a one I confidently assert he will never 
thereafter regret what trouble it may take to win the friendship 
of “ our brother ” the robin. 
H. E. Walton. 
BEES AND BUTTERFLIES AT KEW. 
of Museum No. 2, in Kew Gardens, there 
piece of ground somewhat sunken 
oblong 
1;UST in front 
is a small 
below the surface of the surrounding shrubberies. This 
diminutive parterre, comprising three beds only, is my 
favourite haunt when fortune finds me in that unrivalled com- 
bination of flower-garden, glass-house and arboretum. Granted 
that the placid lake, with its fringe of sallows and alders, 
dominated at the eastern end by a tall linden ; with its moist 
margins adorned by willow-herb and yellow iris ; with its green- 
footed moorhens and babbling sedge-warblers — granted that this 
resort comes easily second. But the little turf-banked herb- 
garden before mentioned is so compact and “ manageable,” so 
unfrequented and yet so entrancing, that, once there, the clock 
has struck the hour twice before 1 realise the fact. Here one 
may find fennel, clary, horehound, balm, rue, lavender and many 
