In Australia--oh, but perhaps you want to know why this handsome bird is called the Cock-of-the-Rock, such a very funny name. Well, although it lives in forests and flies about amongst the trees, yet some of these forests are on the sides of mountains, so, of course, there are rocks all about. The Cock-of-the-Rock likes to perch upon a very high one; so, when the old travellers first saw it perched up there, and looking such a fine bird, they called it a Cock-of-the-Rock, and almost expected to hear it crow. At least, if this is not the right explanation, it is the only one I can think of. The Indians _may_ have another one, but if they have I cannot tell it you, because I do not know what it is. Perhaps if I were to think a little, I should know--or else I could imagine it--but I have no time to think or imagine just at present. I want to get on. In Australia, the great island-continent--the island that is so large that we call it a continent--there is a wonderful bird called the Lyre-bird. It is one of the most wonderful and the most beautiful birds that there is in the world, and all its wonder and all its beauty lies in its tail. This wonderful tail--as I am sure you will guess from the name of the bird--is shaped like a lyre, though it is much more beautiful than any lyre ever was, even the one that Apollo played on. You know, I dare say, what a lyre is, a kind of harp with a very graceful shape, curving first out and then in, and then out again on each side, and with the strings in the centre. Now the Lyre-bird has, on each side of its tail, two beautiful, broad feathers that curve in this way, and are of a pretty chestnut colour, with transparent spaces all the way down. These are the two outer tail feathers, and they are like the two sides of the lyre--the solid part of it which is held in the hand, and which we call the framework. Then, for the strings, which, as you know, are stretched across the hollow space within the framework, not from side to side, but lengthways from one end to the other, the Lyre-bird has a number of most beautiful, thin, graceful feathers, more graceful and delicate than the strings of any harp. Only, instead of being straight, like harp strings, these feathers are curved, and droop over to each side in a most graceful way, and instead of keeping inside the two broad feathers--the sides of the lyre--they come a long way past them, and instead of being only four, which is the number of strings that a lyre has, there are ever so many of them--more than a dozen, I feel sure. And if you could see these feathers, and the way they are made, oh, you would think them wonderful. You know that on each side of the quill of most feathers there is what is called the web--which we have talked about--and this web is made of a number of little, light, delicate sprays, like miniature feathers, which we call barbs, and these are kept close together by having a lot of