72 OUR FEATHERED FRIENDS. 
Of course you have wondered how birds travel, never 
needing a street, or a railroad track, or a bicycle, or a 
boat. Perhaps the birds wonder, too, how it is that we 
never take a flight up into the blue sky, or rest our- 
selves in the trees, always keeping on the ground in 
the grass or dust, or in our houses. Perhaps they 
puzzle their tiny brains to know how it is that we can 
walk so far without getting tired, and how it is that 
we are obliged to climb a tree on all fours, like a bear 
or a squirrel, if we wish to get the nuts which are far 
up out of reach. 
There is no telling what the birds think about us. 
The same Great One who made the birds with hollow 
bones and quills, and who filled many little cells of 
their bodies with air, so that the little creatures might 
be light of weight and buoyant to fly, also made us of 
heavier weight and greater strength of muscle. 
The birds are not inventors, but man has invented 
the steam-engine, and the bicycle, and the sail-boat, so 
that we have come as near flying as we possibly can 
without being birds. 
Almost every boy tries to fly, and he thinks there is 
some secret about it which he can find out, if he is only 
patient enough. He gets up on a high fence, and he 
flaps his arms for wings, and he plays that he is going 
to fly to the next town. The birds, looking on, must 
laugh heartily. 
Perhaps if the boy’s body were boat-shaped, like a 
bird’s body, and if his legs were put midway between 
