for infinite
breadth of green is delightful, however green; and of sea or sky,
however blue.

You must note, however, that the robin's charm is greatly helped by the
pretty space of gray plumage which separates the red from the brown
back, and sets it off to its best advantage. There is no great
brilliancy in it, even so relieved; only the finish of it is exquisite.

34. If you separate a single feather, you will find it more like a
transparent hollow shell than a feather (so delicately rounded the
surface of it),--gray at the root, where the down is,--tinged, and only
tinged, with red at the part that overlaps and is visible; so that,
when three or four more feathers have overlapped it again, all
together, with their joined red, are just enough to give the color
determined upon, each of them contributing a tinge. There are about
thirty of these glowing filaments on each side, (the whole being no
larger across than a well-grown currant,) and each of these is itself
another exquisite feather, with central quill and lateral webs, whose
filaments are not to be counted.

The extremity of these breast plumes parts slightly into two, as you
see in the peacock's, and many other such decorative ones. The
transition from the entirely leaf-like shape of the active plume, with
its oblique point, to the more or less symmetrical dualism of the
decorative plume, corresponds with the change from the pointed green
leaf to the dual, or heart-shaped, petal of many flowers. I shall
return to this part of our subject, having given you, I believe, enough
of detail for the present.

35. I have said nothing to-day of the mythology of the bird, though I
told you that would always be, for us, the most important part of its
natural history. But I am obliged, sometimes, to take what we
immediately want, rather than what, ultimately, we shall need chiefly.
In the second place, you probably, most of you, know more of the
mythology of the robin than I do, for the stories about it are all
northern, and I know scarcely any myths but the Italian and Greek. You
will find under the name "Robin," in Miss Yonge's exhaustive and
admirable "History of Christian Names," the various titles of honor and
endearment connected with him, and with the general idea of
redness,--from the bishop called "Bright Red Fame," who founded the
first great Christian church on the Rhine, (I am afraid of your
thinking I mean a pun, in connection with robins, if I tell you t