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food for its young, interrupts us. We turn our head. The cows in the meadow are lying down while they chew the cud; several rooks are stalking about, not many yards distant; and four or five starlings are walking round each placid beast, intent upon the insects, which are either attracted or disturbed, which emerge from their lurking-places in the ground or the grass, or give annoyance by their pertinacious intrusion.

Of the caged starling we have little to say. It is an imitative bird, and may be readily taught to utter words, or short sentences, and even simple bars of music. When taken young, it becomes, under judicious management, confident and familiar; but never, when captured at a later period. The starling is by no means so easily reclaimed as many other birds-there is a wild love of freedom in its nature, and it is of an impatient temperament—at the same time it is affectionate towards those with whom it is on terms of intimacy. Let the young bird-fancier accept a word of advice. Never purchase a starling perched upon the finger of an itinerant birdseller; it is most probably an old bird, and certainly it is restrained by a strait waistcoat of packthread, bracing the body under the shoulders, and is thus held in wing-curbing fetters, the end of the string being wound round the man's finger; its appearance of tameness is deceptive, it is frightened almost to death; and when taken home and caged, will dash itself about, and never become reconciled. The young nestling of the year is easily known by its plain unmarked plumage, which after the first month becomes spotted, and subsequently very lustrous and beautiful.

THE REDBREAST.

THOSE who are truly lovers of Nature rejoice as much in the sweet sounds and harmonies of woods and fields, as in their pleasant sights. The ear is said to be the most intellectual of all our organs; and assuredly we are receiving every moment by its means both delight and improvement. God has so ordained this material world, as that it shall offer us continually objects fitted to soothe and elevate our spirits, and to lead us to the contemplation of himself. Few who have lingered in copse or meadow, by the sea-shore or the rippling stream, but have felt themselves impressed with cheerful or solemn emotions as they listened to the melodies of Nature. The rain which comes with its gentle patterings upon the leaves, the soft rustling of the wind-swept corn, the murmuring of the waters among the sedges, the gliding of the clear stream over the pebbles, and the whispering winds and stormy gusts which rush among the boughs, or stir the wild waves of the sea, have each a music of their own, and are ministers of delight to us. And the song of birds! Beautifully does the inspired writer conclude his vivid picture of spring-time, by describing it as the season when the singing of birds is come. How gleeful, how joyous are some notes! how touching and plaintive are others! Now there comes forth from the boughs such an outpouring of gladness, that the saddest wanderer in the woods may feel a momentary sympathy with joy; and now comes some gentle note, so like the tone of a lament, that he is ready to pause and pity. We can seldom catch the melody so as to reduce it to the tones of our musical instruments. The notes are all too rapid, their pauses too uncertain, and most are pitched too high to be reached by our instruments of greatest compass; so that the song of the birds remain peculiarly their own.

We wonder not that the enthusiastic naturalist who

lives among them, listens to their songs till he fancies that the birds are intentionally singing their morning or evening hymns to their great Creator. Assuredly they are praising him, though they know it not; for of every flower and leaf, and waving tree and singing bird, the Psalmist said, "All thy works praise thee."

In few spots of earth are the woods more musical with the singing of birds than in our land; and the traveller who has delighted himself among the far brighter and more luxuriant vegetation of the American forests, feels how much richer are our humbler woodlands in their songs. The robin, the favourite of our childhood, is the bird which sings there during the longest season; for though these birds are most familiar to us in the garden and near the dwelling-houses, both in spring and winter, yet their favourite haunts are in woods and forests of great extent, where they may sing among the embowering foliage.

In spring, when the thrushes and blackbirds and linnets and goldfinches and chaffinches and blackcaps are forming a concert, their notes extinguish the soft and weaker ones of the robin; but when autumnal winds have swept away the sheltering leaves, the redbreasts are the chief singers; and later yet, when naked branches stand out against the cold blue sky, when other birds have retreated to their winter haunts, or have winged their way afar, or have perished in the woods, the song of the robin remains to cheer us. And when the snow has covered up all sources of nourishment, we hear it more and more, as the bird approaches more frequently the dwellings of man. Few persons are fully aware of the vocal powers of our pretty bird. The remarks of a writer on this subject, in the Magazine of Natural History,' are very just. "I have frequently,"

he says, "heard this bird sing in a manner to do honour to its connection with the nightingale, when it has been disputed whether or not it could be the robin. I would at any time silence the finished song of the chaffinch, in three distinct parts, to listen to the mellow

notes of my warm-hearted friend, the robin. I doubt if there be any other bird I should prefer to the nightingale.”

It is not only for the rich red plumage on its breast, or its sparkling black eye, or even for its "wood-notes wild," that we love the robin; it is that because, more than any other of our wild birds, it is friendly with man. Nor have the old traditions been without their influence in maintaining a friendly feeling towards this bird. That popular ancient ballad of 'The Children in the Wood,' whose simple pathos still brings the tear into the eye of listening childhood, has done much to render the robin a privileged bird. Children in country places have a number of old rhymes and sayings, indicating that this little creature is under the especial care of the Almighty. They originated in days of superstition, and are believed only in villages far from towns, where, however, the wildest peasant boy spares the robin's nest, under the idea that a broken limb would be the consequence of taking it. Still in these places children listen to the old ballad, which tells of the injured babes:"Their pretty lips with black-berries

Were all besmeared and dyed;

And when they saw the darksome night
They sate them down and cried.

"No burial, this pretty pair,

Of any man receives;

Till robin redbreast, painfully,
Did cover them with leaves."

The notion that the redbreasts performed the last sad offices for the friendless dead, is referred to in other old poems. Thus a pretty, though fanciful funeral dirge, written by John Webster, about the year 1630, has an allusion to it :

:

"Call for the robin redbreast and the wren,

Since o'er shady groves they hover,

And with leaves and flowers do cover

The friendless bodies of unburied men.

"Call unto his funeral dole,

The ant, the field-mouse, and the mole,

To raise him hillock that shall keep him warm,
And when gay tombs are robbed, sustain no harm.

"But keep the wolf far hence, that foe to men,
For with his nails he'll dig them up again :
Glories, like glow-worms, afar off shine bright,
But looked too near, have neither heat nor light."

Would that the robin held everywhere the charmed life that it does in many of our rural places. Its sweet singing and friendly ways will not, however, secure it against the epicures of other lands. During the autumn the robin, like other insectivorous birds, feeds chiefly on fruits and juicy berries, and the flesh then becomes tender and delicate. In many parts of France it is taken at this season for food. In the luxuriant myrtle-groves of Scio and some other of the Greek islands, the birdcatcher takes the robins by dozens, and sells them. When in Italy, Mr. Waterton saw redbreasts to be sold at the bird-market near the Rotunda, at Rome. “I have counted," said this naturalist, "more than fifty robin redbreasts lying dead on one stall. Is it possible,' said I to the vender, that you can kill and eat these pretty songsters?'-Yes,' said he with a grin, and if you will take a dozen of them home for your dinner to-day, you will come back for two dozen tomorrow.'

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The robin is an early riser. Some naturalists say that he is even up before that type of early-rising, the lark; for this sky-loving bird wakes just after dawn, and the robin is stirring a short while before it. Certainly this bird is one of the latest to roost in the evening. It rarely sings, however, after twilight. There are times when its singing may be regarded as a sure promise of coming sunshine; for if its voice can be heard from the bough in summer, at

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