I have heard that far away in New Zealand, travellers who try to make their way through the great tangle of trees and creepers which is called the "Bush," speak of the silence and loneliness of the dense forests as dreadful, and they particularly mention that there is no voice of bird to be heard there. Very different is a place I know, where, although the trees in which they perch are by the roadside, and noisy carts and carriages are coming and going all day long, yet the sparrows overhead keep up such a constant chatter and flutter that once as I passed that way a countryman looked up at the trees and smiled, and said to me, "Plenty of company up there!" When I told the children this they were much amused, and I am sure they thought it would be very dull never to hear the crowing of a cock or the "quack, quack" of a duck--to say nothing of the soft cooing of doves in the wood, and the sweet, rich notes of the thrushes and blackbirds. A Frenchman, who has written a very large book all about birds, says that if we were not so accustomed to them we should think a bird flying through the air the most wonderful thing we had ever seen--and I think he is right; but before we speak of these wonderful and beautiful creatures, let us read once more the verses in Genesis which tell us of their birthday, beginning with, "And God said," and ending with, "And the evening and the morning were the fifth day." We have been speaking of the living creatures which the waters brought forth, and now we must think a little of the "winged fowl," which were made to people the "expansion," and are sometimes called the "fish of the air," as the fishes are called the "birds of the ocean." Of all the happy living things I think none _seem_ so full of joy as the birds. Their very flight has such buoyancy and gladness in it, and their songs seem always to be telling of happiness. Did you ever watch the sea-gulls flashing and darting about, and then floating quietly above your head, or the swallows in their rapid flight, wheeling round and round, and think how beautiful a thing it is just to see them on the wing, fluttering, soaring, floating in that ocean of air which is their home? [Illustration: A "WINGED FOWL."]