BIRD STORIES 



likely Passenger Pigeons have picked other berries there 

 or thereabouts before your day ! 



Do you know a place where the wild rice grows? Ah, 

 so did the Passenger Pigeons, once upon a time! 



But if you know none of these places, even then you 

 can stand near where the flocks used to fly when they 

 were on their journeys. All of you who live between the 

 Atlantic Ocean and the Great Plains can go to the door 

 or a window of the house you live in and point to the sky 

 and think: ''Once so many Passenger Pigeons flew by 

 that the sound of their wings was like the sound of thun- 

 der, and they went through the air faster than a train on 

 a track, and the numbers in their flocks were so many 

 that they hid the sun like great thick clouds." 



When you do that, some of you will doubtless see 

 birds flying over; but we fear that not even one of you 

 will see even one Passenger Pigeon in its flight. 



What happened to the countless millions is recorded 

 in so many books that it need not be written again in 

 this one. This story will tell you just one more thing 

 about these strange and wonderful birds, and that is 

 that no child who reads this story is in any way to blame 

 because the dove is lost. What boy or girl is not glad to 

 think, when some WTong has been done or some mistake 

 has been made, ''It's not my faulf ? 



Even though this bird is gone forever and forever and 



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