A GRATEFUL ROBIN.
A cock robin, in a house on the outskirts of Oxford, has been practising this winter a new form of tameness. Ile is devoted to the housekeeper, and seeks out the room where she happens to be, even pursues her upstairs. It goes without saying that he is well fed ; but he pays for keep by song. He will sit on the banister or the back of a chair and give out his lyric from a full chest. It provides a curiously novel sensa- tion to hear an uneaged bird singing through the house. I remember hearing a wren singing his very vigorous piece in a small outhouse ; and one seemed to detect all sorts of new subtleties in the notes. The sounding-board of the walls gave quality as well as increased loudness. It is, of course, a season of song for which there is no parallel in my recollections. The morning chorus is quite springlike; and, as one would have inferred, several nests with eggs have been discovered.
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