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These are old stories, which I have endeavoured to tell with such a degree of novelty, as natural history can lend them. They have been so often repeated, that probably the original inventors have been long since forgotten. La Fontaine, whose graceful simplicity in such light narrative has been universally allowed, is the most usually referred to.

La Fontaine, in his manner of telling the story of Les deux Pigeons, calls them Friends. But the proverbial conjugal fidelity of this race of birds, makes it seem more natural to describe them as the pigeon and his mate. If it be objected, that the Truant Dove is represented as repeating the apology of Henry the Fourth of France—"Toujours perdrix, toujours Chapon bouilli ne vaut rien;" and that his partner talks