THE ROBIN. 
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skirted with white. Their principal food is berries, 
worms, and caterpillars. Of the tirst he prefers those 
of the sour gum (nyssa sylvatica.') So fond are they 
of gum-berries, that wherever there is one of these trees 
covered with fruit, and flocks of robins in the neigh- 
bourhood, the sportsman need only take his stand near 
it, load, take aim, and tire ; one flock succeeding- another, 
with little interruption, almost the whole day ; by this 
method prodigious slaughter has been made among 
them with little fatigue. When berries fail, they dis- 
perse themselves over the fields, and along the fences, 
in search of worms and other insects. Sometimes they 
will disappear for a week or two, and return again in 
greater numbers than before ; at which time the cities 
pour out their sportsmen by scores, and the markets 
are plentifully supplied with them at a cheap rate. In 
January, 1807, two young men, in one excursion after 
them, shot thirty dozen. In the midst of such devasta- 
tion, which continued many weeks, and, by accounts, 
extended from Massachusetts to Maryland, some humane 
person took advantage of a circumstance common to 
these birds in winter, to stop the general slaughter. 
The fruit called poke-berries ( phytolacca decandria , 
Linn.) is a favourite repast with the robin, after they 
are mellowed by the frost. The juice of the berries is 
of a beautiful crimson, and they are eaten in such 
quantities by these birds, that their whole stomachs are 
strongly tinged with the same red colour. A paragraph 
appeared in the public papers, intimating, that from 
the great quantities of these berries which the robins 
had fed on, they had become unwholesome, and even 
dangerous food ; and that several persons had suffered 
by eating of them. The strange appearance of the 
bowels of the birds seemed to corroborate this account. 
The demand for, and use of them, ceased almost instantly; 
and motives of self-preservation produced at once what 
all the pleadings of humanity could not effect.^ When 
* Governor Drayton, in his View of South Carolina , p. 86, 
observes, that “ the robins in winter devour the berries of the 
VOL. II. H 
