to-day, children?"

"Citizen Bird, you said," replied Nat, "though I don't think I quite
know what you mean."

"What does _citizen_ mean?" asked the Doctor, smiling.

"I think it is a person who lives in a city, but birds aren't people and
they don't live much in the city."

"You are right in one sense, my boy, but the word _citizen_ has also a
far wider meaning. Do you know what it is, Olive?" But Olive was not
sure, and the Doctor asked her to go to his study and look for the word
in the big dictionary.

In a few minutes she returned with a slip of paper from which her father
read: "Citizen--a member of a nation, especially of a republic; one who
owes allegiance to a government and is entitled to protection from it."

"Now, if you listen carefully I think I can prove to you that every bird
you can find is such a citizen of this country, and show you why we
should protect him.

"I told you the other day how the body of a bird was planned and built
to fill a place no other animal could take. Thus by his habits and
character every bird fills a place as a citizen of our Republic, keeping
the laws and doing work for the land that House People, with all their
wisdom, cannot do. Every such fellow-animal of ours, besides having eyes
to see with, and a brain which, if it does not tell him as many things
as our brains tell us, yet teaches him all that he need know to follow