THE BIRDS. 145

Plaus. “ Kings of everything and everybody.
You were older, you must understand, than Chronos
and the Titans and the earth.”

Sirds. “We older than the earth!”

Plaus. “Yes; it is so.”

Birds. “Well, that I never knew before.”

Plaus. “Of course not; because you have not
been properly educated. You have not read what
fEsop tells about the Lark; how his father died, and
he did not know where to bury him, because as yet
there was no earth; so he buried him in his own
head. As for the fact that birds were kings in old
time, there is an abundance of proof. Take the
Cock: he was king of Persia once, long before the
time of Darius. Isn’t. he called the ‘ Persian bird’
to this day? And isn’t it a proof of his old power,
that even now, as soon as his voice is heard in the
morning, all sorts of people — brass-workers, potters,
cobblers, and the rest of them — jump up, put on
their shoes, and go about their business, even though
it is still dark? Then the Kite was once king of the
Greeks.”

Birds. “The Kite king of the Greeks!”

_ Plaus. “Yes; don’t people make a bow to him to
this day?! Then the Cuckoo was king of Egypt
and all Phoenicia. Even now, when he cries
‘cuckoo’ these people begin to cut their corn.
Again, not so very long ago, in our own cities,

1 Just as people take off their hats to a magpie.

Io