THE REDBREAST. 
"When they are pretty well fledged and able to shift for 
themselves, they may be pnt in a cage in which has been 
placed a layer of moss or wool to the depth of an inch. Yon 
may have to try three or four sorts of food before you hit on 
one that suits their appetites. Try first a mixture of bread- 
crumb, boiled lean meat, and hard-boiled egg, mixed all together 
and mashed very fine. If they do not seem to relish this, 
make a fine paste of the following ingredients : — The crumb of 
well-baked stale bread, 3 oz. ; barley meal, 2 oz. ; and boiling 
new milk. It will be as well to soak the bread in cold water 
for a few minutes before you add it to the meal. Take care 
that you squeeze all the water out of it. It is, however, 
generally found that the first-mentioned mixture is greedily 
devoured by the young birds, especially if a few ants’ eggs 
are mixed with it. 
The cock may easily be distinguished from the hen bird, the 
latter being smaller, and the colour of the breast brick -dust 
yellow rather than red — at the same time, it must be borne in 
mind that the breast of the cock robin is more often an orange 
red than vivid scarlet. Moreover, the poll of the male robin 
is much brighter than that of the hen. Before the first moult, 
however, the plumage of the male is as near as possible the 
same as that of the female. 
Handsome looking birds may sometimes be seen for sale with 
white or rather cream-coloured feathers in the wings or tail. 
This is managed by plucking out the feathers a month or so 
after the bird has recovered from a moult. The new feathers 
will be white. This, however, is a cruel practice, the adoption 
of which I by no means recommend. Besides, it is hardly 
worth the trouble, as feathers so produced are so weak and 
sickly as to break off or fall out with the least violence. 
The Food oe the Bobest. — Even in a wild state the robin 
has an extraordinary fancy for butter and grease of any kind. 
An eminent naturalist thus alludes to this peculiar taste : — 
“ Butter is go great a dainty to these birds, that, in a friend’s 
house, frequented during the winter by one or two of them, the 
servant was obliged to be very careful in keeping what was in 
her charge covered, to save it from destruction : if unprotected 
ifc was certain to be eaten. I have known them to visit 
labourers at breakfast hour to eat butter from their hands, and 
enter a lantern to feast on the candle. One, as I have been 
assured, was in the constant habit of entering a house in a 
tan-yard in Belfast by the window, that it might feed upon 
204 
