y
large flights of cross-bills; and whenever the snow lies long and deep
on the ground, a flock of cedar-birds comes in mid-winter to eat the
berries on my hawthorns. I have never been quite able to fathom the
local, or rather geographical partialities of birds. Never before this
summer (1870) have the king-birds, handsomest of flycatchers, built in
my orchard; though I always know where to find them within half a mile.
The rose-breasted grosbeak has been a familiar bird in Brookline (three
miles away), yet I never saw one here till last July, when I found a
female busy among my raspberries and surprisingly bold. I hope she was
_prospecting_ with a view to settlement in our garden. She seemed, on
the whole, to think well of my fruit, and I would gladly plant another
bed if it would help to win over so delightful a neighbor.

(1) Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales, Prologue,_ line 11.

The return of the robin is commonly announced by the
newspapers, like that of eminent or notorious people to a
watering-place, as the first authentic notification of spring. And such
his appearance in the orchard and garden undoubtedly is. But, in spite
of his name of migratory thrush, he stays with us all winter, and I
have seen him when the thermometer marked 15 degrees below zero of
Fahrenheit, armed impregnably within,(1) like Emerson's Titmouse, and as
cheerful as he. The robin has a bad reputation among people who do not
value themselves less for being fond of cherries. There is, I admit,
a spice of vulgarity in him, and his song is rather of the Bloomfield
sort, too largely ballasted with prose. His ethics are of the Poor
Richard school, and the main chance which calls forth all his energy
is altogether of the belly. He never has these fine intervals of lunacy
into which his cousins, the catbird and the mavis, are apt to fall. But
for a' that and twice as muckle 's a' that, I would not exchange him for
all the cherries that ever came out of Asia Minor. With whatever faults,
he has not wholly forfeited that superiority which belongs to the
children of nature. He has a finer taste in fruit than could be
distilled from many successive committees of the Horticultural Society,
and he eats with a relishing gulp not inferior to Dr. Johnson's. He
feels and freely exercises his right of eminent domain. His is the
earliest mess of green peas; his all the mulberries I had fancied mine.
But if he get also the lion's share of the raspberries, he is a