I have seen many more springs than you have seen: and yet I always wait for robin on the lawn. I often wonder whether the same robins come back to my lawn. They seem to go to business at once. They hop with the most confident air, and day after day pull strings out of the ground. You know what these strings are: but do you know how robin finds them? Is it by smell, or sight, or feeling, or hearing? Do you suppose he is listening when he cocks his head to one side and then to the other? Or is he merely making motions? And I wonder whether birds and animals usually make motions just for the sake of making them? I have asked you many questions, and not one of you can answer. Perhaps I cannot answer. You ask, "What's the use?" If you can see robin, and learn why, you can also learn other things. But I like robin just because he is robin. There is one thing more. You will read about robin redbreast. Who is he? Find out for me whether robin redbreast of Europe and of English poetry is the same as our American bird. LEAFLET LXV. CROWS.[83] BY ALICE G. McCLOSKEY. (Compare Leaflet XXIV.) [83] Junior Naturalist Monthly, February, 1904. [Illustration] At a wigwam in the Adirondack Mountains a tame crow lives with a family of Indians. These Indians make baskets of birch bark and other things that they find out of doors, and sell them to visitors who spend their summer in the mountains. The little crow helps in the business. He makes himself so interesting to the passers-by that they stop to watch him. The Indians then have an opportunity to show their baskets, and very often sell them. But we need not go to the Adirondacks to find a crow that earns his living. Mr. F. E. L. Beal, who has studied crows a long time, speaks of them as valuable farm hands; and Neltje Blanchan says that they are as much entitled to a share of the corn as the horse that plows it. This may surprise boys and girls who have heard crows spoken of as thieves and rascals. Let us look into their story so that we can find out for ourselves whether to the farmer the crow is a friend or an enemy. _How Jim Crow does harm:_-- 1. By killing toads, frogs, small snakes, and salamanders ("lizards"). Why are these little creatures first rate farm hands? 2. By pulling up sprouting corn. Some farmers prevent this by tarring the corn. 3. By stealing eggs, small chickens, and tiny birds. It is said that the crow is rarely guilty of these wrongs. What do you know about it? _How Jim Crow does good:_-- 4. By eating large numbers of insects: grasshoppers, caterpillars (including army worms and cut worms), June bugs, and other insects. So many insects does he devour that he earns more than he destroys. A half bushel of corn scattered on a field is said to be sufficient in many cases to prevent Jim Crow from pulling the growing corn. _To study crows:_--