. THE BIRDS. ' 149

K. H. “How about long life? That again is a
gift of heaven. Must they die in their youth?”

Plaus. “Certainly not. The birds will add three
hundred years or so to their span.”

K. H. “Where will they get them to add?”

Plaus. “Where will they get them? Why, from
their own store to be sure. Don’t you know that
the crow outlives five generations of men?”

Hope. “It is quite clear that the birds will make
much better kings than Zeus.”

Plaus. “Yes; and men will no longer have to build
temples of stone with gold-plated doors. The birds
will be quite content to live in trees; an ilex will do
for the commoner sort, and the most exalted will
have an olive-tree. There will be no more need to go
to Delphi or Ammon; men will stand in a shrubbery
with a pennyworth of barley in their hands, — that
will be sacrifice enough for these easy-going deities.”

King Hoopoe now proceeded to invite the two
friends to come into his nesting-place, as he called it;
they should be enrolled, he said, in the bird-nation.
The difficulty of their having no wings wherewith to
fly would be easily got over. There was a root he
- knew of which would make wings grow without any
loss of time. While they were gone to go through
the ceremony of becoming naturalized citizens, and to
fit themselves out with feathers, the assembled birds ~
sang a ditty in which they set forth: the superiority
of their race over men.