THE BEDBEEAST. 
Jesse also "bears witness to tlie redbreast’s extreme pugnacity. 
“ I lately observed,” says be, “ two of them, after giving the 
usual challenge, fight with so much animosity that I could 
easily have caught them both, as they reeled close to my feet 
on a gravel-path. After some time, one of them had the 
advantage, and would have killed his opponent had they not 
been separated. Indeed, these birds will frequently fight till 
one has lost his life.” 
“ One of these birds,” says another authority, “ killed up- 
wards of twenty of its own kind, merely because they came 
into a greenhouse which he chose to arrogate to himself.” 
The robin’s courage is inherent, and it must not be supposed 
that it needs the biting frost and cold of winter to freeze every 
atom of fear and timidity out of his brave little heart ere he 
exhibits anything like real pluck. I should be sorry if it were 
otherwise; because then all the wonderful stories we hear of 
him would seem only to prove that it was not courage at all, but 
merely the recklessness of self-preservation. He is just as 
brave and daring in the summer as he is in the winter, and 
from a far higher motive than that of filling his empty belly, 
viz., defending his young. A remarkable instance of this came 
under my own observation a few years ago. 
Hear the market-place at Brentford there was a blacksmith’s 
shop, and it happened at the beginning of April (just when the 
robin begins to lay) that the blacksmith was so slack of work 
that he shut up his shop, and did not go near it for some 
weeks. There was a broken window in the smithy, and on the 
top of the big bellows was a little old saucepan with which the 
smith used to bale water on to the fire. About the end of 
April work came in, so the blacksmith unlocked his workshop 
door, and began to make his fire up. He had not been in the 
place many minutes, however, before he became aware of a 
twittering, and on looking about he discovered five unfledged 
robins in their nest in the little saucepan on the top of the 
bellows. He had barely made the discovery, when the father 
of the little brood made his appearance at the broken window, 
with a worm in his mouth. Instead, however, of being afraid, 
and flying away (to use the blacksmith’s own words), “ there 
he stayed, looking as indignant as though I had invaded his 
premises rather than he mine.” Presently the hen robin also 
made her appearance, so the good smith resolved to put back 
the saucepan as he had found it, and to go on with his work. 
The old birds immediately flew in, and, delivering the worms 
198 
