To those who find a fascination in prehistoric legends the study of bird representation on the ancient pottery of some of our western Indians, and in the mounds of the Mississippi Valley, is offered in some of these government reports. They are a very mine of suggestion and information. Imagination, subtle guide to many a self-entertaining mind, runs fast and faster on before while one reads, and one wonders how it came to pass one never knew about government reports before. The Ethnological Bureau is the poet's corner of our government--the romance of our dull facts and figures. Without its unsleeping eye forever scanning the sky of unwritten literature for gems, how would some of us know about the history of the human race as preserved by the Iroquois Indians? And that birds had a wing, if not a hand, in the peopling of America at least? Of course America was "all the world" to these Indians, and naturally enough their priests and poets combined to give some adequate genesis for the people. It is said that a story, once started on its rounds in civilized society, gathers facts and things as it goes, until at last--and not before very long--its own original parent "wouldn't recognize it." Not so the legends that have come to us through savage tongues. Simple to start with, they maintain their original type without a trace of addition. What students gather for us of folk-lore is as correct as though the first text had been copyrighted by its author. Note this simplicity in all barbaric legends, the discourse coming straight to the facts and leaving off when it is done. This one legend referred to of the origin of the human race makes so good a preface to the closing rhyme of our text, that we are tempted to give it for that special purpose. According to this story of the Iroquois Indians, it is to birds that woman owes her history. Unconsciously to these natives of America, they identified woman with birds and birds' wings for all time. Unconsciously, perhaps, to herself, woman has also identified her sex with birds and bird wings, though in a different relation to that of the Iroquois. The legend will need no further introduction to the girl or woman of America who may become interested in "Birds of Song and Story."