SAND DUNES AND SALT MARSHES 



pair of feathers. In the modern bird these 

 are largely compressed together into the 

 ^^ ploughshare " bone, with tail feathers ar- 

 ranged like a fan, but in the embryo there 

 are six or seven separate vertebrae. 



Scratch a bird and you will find a reptile, 

 can be said as truly as the similar trite remark 

 concerning civilized man and savage, with the 

 difference that one must scratch much more 

 deeply in the case of the bird. 



The English sparrow, although fond of 

 bathing in mud puddles, like all street gam- 

 ins, would never be mistaken for a water bird, 

 yet in its early infancy it is a capital swim- 

 mer, as I discovered in a perfectly innocent 

 and excusable manner. Having occasion to 

 shut an outside blind in my city house, I found 

 that I had torn down a huge nest of street 

 bric-a-brac that English sparrows had built 

 between it and the wall. Two young had 

 fallen to the ground below and were pounced 

 on by a dog, two others — fat, misshapen 

 things, mostly stomach and devoid of all but 

 the black lines of incipient feathers — re- 

 mained on my hands. As I could not rebuild 

 their nest, and as I was entirely unprepared 

 to furnish them with properly modified food, 



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