BIRDS OF THE WAVE AND WOODLAND 25 



pilgrims, along the broad highways of massacre, walled in, as 

 it were, with disaster on either side, running the gauntlet of 

 ambush and open warfare all along the line. The myriads that 

 perish before they reach us are beyond computation. But 

 the survivors rear new broods, the gaps by death are all 

 filled by birth, and off they go again once more, giving 

 hostages to pitiless calamity, and strewing afresh in Autumn 

 the tracks of Spring with countless corpses. But I did not 

 tell the child this. She would have said the birds were 

 "stupid," and thought, perhaps, the less of them and the 

 worse. 



So before we had got home I told her that "perhaps" the 

 reason why the birds all came to England to build their nests 

 and lay their eggs here, was because they wanted their young 

 ones to learn the best of manners and to go to the best of 

 bird-schools. " Some of these birds come from countries where 

 the people are called savages, because their behaviour is 

 shocking, and they have no schools, and so (perhaps) tlie 

 birds come here because they want the little ones to be nicely 

 brought up." 



It is not much of a reason, I confess. It will not probably 

 satisfy Professor Ptthmllnsprts. But it satisfied my small 

 companion, for she approved the conduct of the old birds. 

 And when you can satisfy a child on a point that you can not 

 satisfy a grown-up person on, you have got some way, depend 

 upon it, towards the truth. There must be some advantage 



D 



