CHRIS TINA R OSSE TTI 
69 
“ We’d have our change of hopes and fears, 
Small quarrels, reconcilements sweet, 
I’d perch by you to chirp and cheer 
Or hop about on active feet 
And (etch you dainty bits to eat,” &c. 
Very numerous are the references in the poems to the red- 
breast, which was evidently a favourite bird. In the opening of 
“The First Spring Day ” there is a charming one : — 
“ I wonder if the sap is stirring yet, 
If wintry birds are dreaming of a mate, 
If frozen snowdrops feel as yet the sun, 
And crocus fires are kindling one by one : 
Sing, robin, sing ; 
I still am sore in doubt concerning Spring.” 
In “ The Keynote ” (“ A Pageant and other Poems ”) the 
second verse runs thus : — 
“ Yet Robin sings through Winter’s rest, 
When bushes put their berries on ; 
While they their ruddy jewels don, 
He sings out of a ruddy breast ; 
The hips and haws and ruddy breast 
Make one spot warm where snowflakes lie, 
They break and cheer the unlovely rest 
Of Winter’s pause — and why not I ? ” 
This little paper may be appropriately concluded by a 
paragraph from Mr. Mackenzie Bell’s biography, where is told 
an incident which occurred at Hastings, related by Christina 
Rossetti in “ Time Flies.” “ She there says how, when one of 
a luncheon party, she heard a General who was present relate 
that, when returning from shooting one day, he observed ‘ a 
speck in the sky.’ Taking it for a wandering bird he aimed 
at it his last random shot, but he felt no surprise at no result 
following when he remembered the considerable distance be- 
tween him and the object. The General had at home a robin 
— originally wild and still allowed to go at large — a bird that 
had acquired a certain degree of tameness through the kindness 
shown to it. To this ‘ free, familiar, bird ’ the General was greatly 
attached, but it ‘ never came again ’ after the day just mentioned, 
and ever afterwards he was of opinion that, on the occasion re- 
ferred to, he had himself unwittingly shot it, and when he told 
the anecdote he was unable to do so without emotion. 
“ This is Christina’s comment : ‘ Let us have mercy on 
each other and forgive : even a wronged robin’s silence and 
absence were hard to bear.’ ” 
Helen J. Ormerod. 
Squirrels ? — I should be very grateful if, in next month’s Nature Notes, 
you, or any of your readers, would inform me as to a phenomenon which we have 
observed in Suffolk this last winter, viz., the evident biting off by some animal 
of the shoots of the spruce fir. Hundreds of shoots maybe seen lying under some 
trees. I have heard it is supposed to be the work of some beetle or other. I 
should be very glad to know if there is any remedy for this. M. B. 
