me away from the main body, and dwell peaceably in our midst.

"Now, Choo Hoo, as I said, being an adventurer, with no more property
than the ancestral ash, but a pigeon of very extraordinary genius,
considered within himself that if any one could but persuade these
mighty and incredible myriads to follow him he could over-run the entire
country. The very absence of any nobles or rich pigeons among them would
make his sway the more absolute if he once got power, for there would
be none to dispute it, or to put any check upon him. Ignorant and
barbarous as they were, the common pigeons would worship such a captain
as a hero and a demi-god, and would fly to certain destruction in
obedience to his orders.

"He was the more encouraged to the enterprise because it was on record
that in olden times great bodies of pigeons had passed across the
country sweeping everything before them. Nothing could resist their
onward march, and it is owing to these barbarian invasions that so many
of our most precious chronicles have been destroyed, and our early
history, Bevis dear, involved in obscurity. Their dominion--destructive
as it was--had, however, always passed away as rapidly as it arose, on
account of the lack of cohesion in their countless armies. They marched
without a leader, and without order, obeying for a time a common
impulse; when that impulse ceased they retired tumultuously, suffering
grievous losses from the armies which gathered behind and hung upon
their rear. Their bones whitened the fields, and the sun, it is said,
was darkened at noonday by their hastening crowds fleeing in dense
columns, and struck down as they fled by hawks and crows.

"Had they possessed a leader in whom they felt confidence the result
might have been very different; indeed, our wisest historians express no
doubt that civilisation must have been entirely extinguished, and these
lovely fields and delicious woods have been wholly occupied by the
barbarians. Fortunately it was not so. But, as I said, Choo Hoo,
retiring to the top of a lofty fir-tree, and filled with these ideas,
surveyed from thence the masses of his countrymen returning to the woods
to roost as the sun declined, and resolved to lose no time in
endeavouring to win them to his will, and to persuade them to embark
upon the extraordinary enterprise which he had conceived.

"Without delay he proceeded to promulgate his plans, flying from tribe
to tribe, and from flock to flock, cea