And if some of you have mothers who do not kill the birds, who do not wear the hats that have birds' lives sewn into them, well it will do them no harm to promise too. Then they never _will_ wear them, and if they should never mean to wear them, they will be all the more ready to promise not to. Only in that case you might put your arms round the neck of some other woman that you have seen wearing those hats and kiss _her_ and ask _her_ to promise. And she will, you will have touched that spot because you are a little child, even though you are not her own little child. Perhaps you will remind her of a little child that was hers once. Now I am going to tell you about some of the most beautiful birds that there are in the world, but you must remember that they are being killed so fast every day that, unless you get that promise from your mother very quickly, there will soon be no more of them left; as soon as she promises it will be all right, for of course it will not be only _your_ mother who will have promised, but the mother of every other little girl all over the country, and as the birds were only being killed to put into their hats, they will be let alone now, for now no more hats like that will be wanted. No one will wear hats that have birds' lives sewn into them, any more. So the beautiful birds will go on living and flying about in the world and making _it_ beautiful, too. You will have saved them--_you_ the children will have saved them--and no grown-up person will have done _anything_ to be more proud about. I daresay a grown-up person _would_ be more proud about what he had done, even if it was nothing very particular; but _that_ is another matter. Now we will begin, and as we come to one bird after another, you shall make your mother promise not to wear it in her hat. CHAPTER II Birds of Paradise First I will tell you about the Birds of Paradise. You have heard of them perhaps, and how beautiful they are, but you may have thought that birds with a name like that did not live here at all. For the Emperor of China lives in China, and if the Emperor of China lives in China, the Birds of Paradise ought, one would think, to live in Paradise. But that is not the case--not now at any rate. They live a very long way off, it is true, right over at the other side of the world, but it is not quite so far off as Paradise is. No, it cannot be there that they live, because if you were to leave England in a ship and sail always in the right direction, you would come at last to the very place, instead of coming right round to England again, which is what you would do if you were to sail for Paradise--for you know, of course, that the earth is round. But why, then, are they called Birds of Paradise if they live here on the earth? Well, there are two ways of explaining it. I will tell you first one and then the other, and you can choose the way you like best. The first way is this.