68 INTRODUCTION. 



or even the existence, of the individuals composing this beauti- 

 ful, and, in many respects, highly interesting class of beings. 

 Upon considerations like these it is not my design to enter. 

 Their development would constitute a task more than suffi- 

 cient to confound the pretensions of the wisest ; and I should 

 more admire the mind that had discovered the causes, relations, 

 connections, ends, and objects of a feather, than that w^hich 

 had measured the magnitudes and distances of the planets, 

 traced their orbits, and calculated the velocities of their revolu- 

 tions. The plumage also answers another very important end 

 in the economy of birds, being the medium of their locomotion 

 in the air, — a faculty which gives them so many advantages 

 over quadrupeds, and which is not possessed, in an equal de- 

 gree, by any other class of animals. 



The plumage, then, is the general covering of a bird, which 

 usually invests all its parts, excepting the bill, eyes, tarsi, and 

 toes. It consists of a great number of individual parts, which 

 are denominated feathers. Besides these parts, however, so 

 denominated, there are in most birds others, which, lying con- 

 cealed among the former, and not making their appearance at 

 the surface, are apt to be overlooked by superficial observers. 

 These are the down-feathers, and hairs, or piliform feathers, 

 which will be described in course, but which, for the sake of 

 simplification, may be for the present overlooked. These indi- 

 vidual parts or feathers are disposed upon the skin in what is 

 called quincuncial order; that is, in lines intersecting each 

 other at acute angles, and in such a manner as to lie over each 

 other, like the tiles on the roof of a house ; a circumstance de- 

 noted in zoology', as well as in botany, by the term imbrication, 

 their general direction being backwards, or from the head of 

 the bird to the tail and extremities. 



The plumage, as has just been observed, does not cover the 

 whole surface of a bird ; but, besides the parts mentioned, as 

 being altogether bare, there are others, which, although covered 

 over bv the feathers, vet do not give oriofin to them, and are 

 thus, in a particular sense, bare. These parts are : a line from 

 the base of the upper mandible to the eye, called the lore or 

 bridle ; a line from the ear to the shoulder, on either side of 



