ant." In what parts--how
far--in what manner?

18. In none of the old natural history books can I find any account of
the robin as a traveler, but there is, for once, some sufficient reason
for their reticence. He has a curious fancy in his manner of traveling.
Of all birds, you would think he was likely to do it in the cheerfulest
way, and he does it in the saddest. Do you chance to have read, in the
Life of Charles Dickens, how fond he was of taking long walks in the
night and alone? The robin, en voyage, is the Charles Dickens of birds.
He always travels in the night, and alone; rests, in the day, wherever
day chances to find him; sings a little, and pretends he hasn't been
anywhere. He goes as far, in the winter, as the north-west of Africa;
and in Lombardy, arrives from the south early in March; but does not
stay long, going on into the Alps, where he prefers wooded and wild
districts. So, at least, says my Lombard informant.

I do not find him named in the list of Cretan birds; but even if often
seen, his dim red breast was little likely to make much impression on
the Greeks, who knew the flamingo, and had made it, under the name of
Phoenix or Phoenicopterus, the center of their myths of scarlet birds.
They broadly embraced the general aspect of the smaller and more
obscure species, under the term [Greek: xonthos], which, as I
understand their use of it, exactly implies the indescribable silky
brown, the groundwork of all other color in so many small birds, which
is indistinct among green leaves, and absolutely identifies itself with
dead ones, or with mossy stems.

19. I think I show it you more accurately in the robin's back than I
could in any other bird; its mode of transition into more brilliant
color is, in him, elementarily simple; and although there is nothing,
or rather because there is nothing, in his plumage, of interest like
that of tropical birds, or even of our own game-birds, I think it will
be desirable for you to learn first from the breast of the robin what a
feather is. Once knowing that, thoroughly, we can further learn from
the swallow what a wing is; from the chough what a beak is; and from
the falcon what a claw is.

I must take care, however, in neither of these last two particulars, to
do injustice to our little English friend here; and before we come to
his feathers, must ask you to look at his bill and his feet.

20. I do not think it is distinctly enough felt by us that the beak of