25 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



naked bodies, their unwieldy, disproportionate abdomina, and their 

 heads too heavy for their necks to support, we could not but marvel." 



Davy and Whewell might, further, have found in Erasmus Dar- 

 win's " Zounomia " * some remarks on the different stages of maturity 

 which animals of different species have reached when they are first 

 brought into the world. The author uses these very words : " The 

 chicks of the pheasant and the partridge have more perfect plumage, 

 more perfect eyes, and greater aptitude for walking, than the callow 

 nestlings of the dove or the wren. It is only necessary to show the 

 first their food and teach them how to pick, while the latter for days 

 obtrude a gaping mouth." Would it have been too much trouble for 

 a man of such extensive reading as Professor Whewell to have run 

 his eyes over the passage above quoted ? Being, moreover, a German 

 scholar at least to the extent of an occasional mistranslation from the 

 language the Professor might have read that Lorenz Oken divided 

 the class Birds into two main subdivisions, nest-sitters and nest-quit- 

 ters (nest-hocker tend nest-fluchter), according as when hatched they 

 remain helpless in the nest, or are at once able to run about and seek 

 food for themselves. 



Davy, by the mouth of " Ornither," gives a very lame explanation 

 of the fact that the majority of birds can not fly as soon as hatched. 

 Before they can take flight they have to await not alone the growth of 

 their wing-feathers, but the simultaneous development of the muscles. 

 The Raptores, Passeres, etc., are, as we have already seen, unable to 

 walk as well as fly. Does this inability depend upon the want of 

 feathers ? The fact that parent-birds educate their young is clearly 

 established by the interesting observations of Dr. C. Abbott, f 



In the case of birds of prey the process of education is somewhat 

 prolonged, even after leaving the nest. It is thought by many that 

 Deuteronomy xxxii., v. 11, is a description of the manner in which 

 eagles train their young to fly ; " stirring up " the nest, i. e., shaking 

 and disturbing it so as to compel the nestlings to leave their cradle ; 

 " fluttering " over them " and bearing them on her wings " that is to 

 say, following and intercepting their downward movement, and aiding 

 them to reascend. 



Thus we see that the condition of the young of the lower animals 

 is, after all, analogous to that of the human infant. The child, indeed, 

 is still slower in learning to walk than the kitten or the young ape, 

 not because he has to learn in a different manner, but because the 

 development of his muscles and joints is much more gradual ; because 

 his head is relatively heavier ; because he has to support himself on 

 one pair of limbs only, thus rendering his base much narrower and his 

 center of gravity higher from the ground ; and because, as we have 

 already pointed out in the case of the kitten, the hinder extremities 

 gain strength more slowly than the anterior. 



* Vol. i., pp. 187-194. f " Quarterly Journal of Science," vol. vi., p. 361. 



