So, when it heard Apollo playing so sweetly on his lyre, it was quite enraptured, and began to imitate it so cleverly that you would have thought there were two Apollos playing on two lyres. All the other birds and creatures were delighted at this--for, of course, two good things are better than only one--but, for some reason or other which I cannot quite explain, Apollo was not nearly so pleased. In fact, he became angry, and _so_ angry that he threw his lyre at the poor bird who had so appreciated his music, and the lyre hit it on the tail as it ran away and cut it right off. Of course, when the Lyre-bird found that it had no tail it was in a terrible state, and it came to Apollo and said: "It was because I loved your music that I tried to imitate it. I failed, no doubt--for who can sing as Apollo?--but still it is a hard price to have to pay for my admiration." And when Apollo heard that, he was so sorry for what he had done, and so pleased with the way in which the Lyre-bird had explained things, that he said to it: "Well, I will make amends, and what I give shall be better than what I took away. The lyre which I threw at you, you shall keep, but it shall be of feathers, and even more beautiful than my own. You shall not play on it, for none but myself must do that, but you shall always be a most musical bird, as you are now, and able to imitate any sound that you hear, even my own playing. That power I will not take away from you, I will even increase it, and from this time forth you shall be called the Lyre-bird, in honour of your piety and good taste." That is how the Lyre-bird got its tail, and why it is, now, a very beautiful, as well as a very musical, bird. But what its tail was like before Apollo gave it the one it has now, that I cannot tell you, for it has never been known to allude to the subject, and it would hardly do to ask it. We only know that it was quite ordinary. But, do you know, Apollo never quite liked the Lyre-bird's imitating him, even though he had told it that it might, and so, not so very long afterwards, he left the country. He went to Greece--it was a very long time ago--and he has not gone back to Australia yet.