V 

 EVE AND PETRO 



If swallows studied history, 1920 would have been an 

 important date for Eve and Petro. It was the one hun- 

 dredth anniversary of the year when a man named 

 Long visited cliff swallows among the Rocky Mountains. 



The century between 1820 and 1920 had given what 

 we call civilization a chance to make many changes in 

 the wild world of birds. During that time hfeless hum- 

 mingbirds had been made to perch upon the hats of 

 fashionable women; herring gulls had been robbed of 

 their eggs and killed for their feathers ; shooting move- 

 ments had been organized to kill crows with shotgun or 

 rifle, in order that more gunpowder might be sold; the 

 people of Alaska had been permitted to kill more than 

 eight thousand eagles in the last great breeding-place 

 left to our National Emblem ; uncounted millions of Pas- 

 senger Pigeons had been slaughtered, and these wonder- 

 ful birds done away with forever; and the methods by 

 which egrets had been murdered were too horrible to 

 write about in books for children to read. 



But however shamefully civilization had treated, and 

 had brought up children to treat, these and many other 

 of their fellow creatures of the world, who had a right to 



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