species build. When this brood was fledged she again
repaired to the Oak, and reared a third story on the old domicile, using
the moss before mentioned, making a very elaborate affair, and finally
finishing up by festooning it with long sprays of moss. This bird and
her mate were quite tame. I fed them with whortleberries, which they
seemed to relish, and they would come almost to my feet to get them.

The amount of food which the young robin is capable of absorbing is
enormous. A couple of vigorous, half-grown birds have been fed, and in
twelve hours devoured ravenously, sixty-eight earth worms, weighing
thirty-four pennyweight, or forty-one per cent more than their own
weight. A man at this rate should eat about seventy pounds of flesh per
day, and drink five or six gallons of water.

The following poem by the good Quaker poet Whittier is sweet because
_he_ wrote it, interesting because it recites an old legend which
incidentally explains the color of the robin's breast, and unique
because it is one of the few poems about our American bird.

THE ROBIN.

My old Welsh neighbor over the way
Crept slowly out in the sun of spring,
Pushed from her ears the locks of gray,
And listened to hear the robin sing.

Her grandson, playing at marbles, stopped,
And--cruel in sport, as boys will be--
Tossed a stone at the bird, who hopped
From bough to bough in the apple tree.

"Nay!" said the grandmother; "have you not heard,
My poor, bad boy! of the fiery pit,
And how, drop by drop, this merciful bird
Carries the water that quenches it?

"He brings cool dew in his little bill,
And lets it fall on the souls of sin:
You can see the mark on his red breast still
Of fires that scorch as he drops it in.

"My poor Bron rhuddyn! my breast-burned bird,
Singing so sweetly from limb to limb,
Very dear to the heart of Our Lord
Is he who pities the lost like Him."

"Amen!" I said to the beautiful myth;
"Sing, bird of God, in my heart as well:
Each good thought is a drop wherewith
To cool and lessen the fires of hell.

"Prayers of love like rain-drops fall,
Tears of pity are cooling dew,
And dear to the heart of Our Lord are all
Who suffer like Him in the good they do."

THE KINGFISHER.

Dear Children:

I shall soon arrive from the south. I hear that all