is silent. Who saw them come? Who saw them

depart?

This pert little winter wren, for instance, darting in and out the fence, diving under the rubbish here

and coming up yards away, how does he manage with those little circular wings to compass degrees and zones, and arrive always in the nick of time? Last. August I saw him in the remotest wilds of the Adirondacks, impatient and inquisitive as usual; a few weeks later, on the Potomac, I was greeted by the same hardy busybody. Does he travel by easy stages from bush to bush and from wood to wood? or has that compact little body force and courage to brave the night and the upper air, and so achieve leagues at one pull?

And yonder bluebird with the earth tinge on his breast and the sky tinge on his back, did he come down out of heaven on that bright March morning when he told us so softly and plaintively that, if we pleased, spring had come? Indeed, there is nothing in the return of the birds more curious and suggestive than in the first appearance, or rumors of the appearance, of this little blue-coat. The bird at first seems a mere wandering voice in the air; one hears its call or carol on some bright March morning, but is uncertain of its source or direction; it falls like a drop of rain when no cloud is visible; one looks and listens, but to no purpose.

The weather changes: perhaps a cold snap with snow comes on, and it may be a week before I hear the note again, see the bird sitting on a stake on the fence, lifting his wing as he calls cheerily to his mate. Its notes now become daily more frequent; the birds multiply, and, flitting from point to point, call the warble more confidently and gleefully. Their boldness increases till one sees them hovering with a saucy, inquiring air about barns and outbuildings, peeping into dovecotes and stable windows, inspecting knotholes and pump trees, intent only on a place to nest.

They wage war against robins, pick quarrels with swallows, and seem to deliberate for days over the policy of taking forcible possession of one of the mud houses of the latter. But as the season advances they drift more into the background. Schemes of conquest which they at first seemed bent upon are abandoned, and they settle down very quietly in their old quarters in remote stumpy fields.

Not long after the bluebird comes the robin, sometimes in March, but in most of the northern states April is the month of the robin. In large numbers they scour the fields and groves. You hear their piping in the meadow, in the pasture, on the hillside. Walk in the woods, and the dry leaves rustle with the whir of their wings, the air is vocal with their cheery call. In excess of joy and vivacity, they run, leap, scream,

chase each other through the air, diving and sweeping among the trees with perilous rapidity.

In that free, fascinating half-work and half-play pursuit, sugar-making, a pursuit which still lingers in many parts of New York as in New England, the robin is one's constant companion. When the day is sunny and the ground bare, you meet him at all points and hear him at all hours. At sunset, on the tops of the tall maples, with look heavenward, and in a spirit of utter abandonment, he carols his simple strain. And sitting thus amid the stark, silent trees, above the wet, cold earth, with the chill of winter still in the air, there is no fitter or sweeter songster in the whole round year. It is in keeping with the scene and the occasion. How round and genuine the notes are, and how eagerly our ears drink them in! The first utterance and the spell of winter is thoroughly broken, and the remembrance of it afar off.

Robin is one of the most native and democratic of our birds; he is one of the family, and seems much nearer to us than those rare, exotic visitants, as the orchard starling, or rose-breasted grosbeak, with their distant, high-bred ways. Hardy, noisy, frolicsome, neighborly and domestic in his habits, strong of wing and bold in spirit, he is the pioneer of the thrush family, and well worthy of the finer artists whose coming he heralds and in a measure prepares us for.

I could wish robin less native and plebeian in one respect, the building of his nest. Its coarse material and rough masonry are creditable neither to his skill as a workman nor his taste as an artist. I am the more forcibly reminded of his deficiency in this respect from observing yonder humming bird's nest, which is a marvel of fitness and adaptation, a proper setting for this winged gem, - the body of it composed of a white, felt-like substance, probably the down of some plant or the wool of some worm, and toned down in keeping with the branch on which it sits by minute tree lichens, woven together by threads as fine and frail as gossamer.

From robin's good looks and musical turn we might reasonably predict a domicile of him as clean and handsome a nest as the king-bird's, whose harsh jingle, compared with robin's evening melody, is as the clatter of pots and kettles beside the tone of a flute. I love his note and ways better even than those of the orchard starling or the Baltimore oriole; yet his nest, compared with theirs, is a half-subterranean hut contrasted with a Roman villa. There is something courtly and poetical in a pensile nest. Next to a castle in the air is a dwelling suspended to the slender branch of a tall tree, swayed and rocked forever by the wind.

From Wake Robin.

JOHN BURROUGHS.