CHAPTER Xn 



BIRD GENEALOGY 



'* The fairy tales of science, and the long result of time." 



— Tennyson. 



FROM the crocodile to the crow is a far 

 cry, yet there was a time in the remote 

 past when ancestors of both these crea- 

 tures were so much alike that it would have 

 required a careful naturalist, had he lived 

 then, and a thorough examination of bones 

 and articulations, to decide whether the said 

 ancestors were birds or reptiles. The pres- 

 ence of teeth do not make the reptile, nor the 

 absence of them the bird, any more than the 

 presence of wings make the bird, and their 

 absence the reptile. When we study animals 

 to-day and also consider how small are their 

 chances for becoming good fossils, the won- 

 der is not that there are so many missing links 

 in the chain of organic life, but that links liv- 

 ing and fossil should be as perfect as they are. 



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