fellow of pious associations
and with a tender fancy for covering the unburied dead with leaves; but
in real life he is a little fire-eater, always ready to pick a quarrel
with his less pugnacious neighbours. Yet so persistently does his good
name cling, that, while ever ready to condemn the aggressive sparrow for
the same fault, all of us have a good word for the robin, and in few of
our wild birds are character and reputation so divergent.

Surely, however, the most interesting aspect of this familiar bird is
its tameness, not to say attachment to ourselves, and so marked is its
complete absence of fear that it is a wild bird in name only, and
indeed few cage birds are ever so bold as to perch on the gardener's
spade on the look-out for the worms as he turns them up from the damp
soil. The robin might, in fact, furnish the text of a lay-sermon on the
fruits of kindness to animals, and those dialectical people who ask
whether we are kind to the robin because it trusts us, or whether, on
the other hand, it trusts us because we are kind to it, ask a foolish
question that raises a wholly unnecessary confusion between cause and
effect. It is a question that those, at any rate, who have seen the bird
in countries where it is treated differently will have no difficulty
whatever in answering. Broadly speaking, the redbreast has the best time
of it in northern lands. This tolerance has not, as has been suggested,
any connection with Protestantism, for such a distinction would exclude
the greater part of Ireland, where, as it happens, the bird is as safe
from persecution as in Britain, since the superstitious peasants firmly
believe that anyone killing a "spiddog" will be punished by a lump
growing on the palm of his hand. The untoward fate of the robin in Latin
countries bordering the Mediterranean has nothing to do with religion,
but is merely the result of a pernicious habit of killing all manner of
small birds for the table. The sight of rows of dead robins laid out on
poulterers' stalls in the markets of Italy and southern France inspires
such righteous indignation in British tourists as to make them forget
for the moment that larks are exposed in the same way in Bond Street and
at Leadenhall. In Italy and Provence, taught by sad experience the robin
is as shy as any other small bird. It has learnt its lesson like the
robins in the north, but the lesson is different. The most friendly
robin I ever remember meeting with, out