BIRD-LIFE 



CHAPTER I. 



THE BIRD : ITS PLACE IN NATURE AND 

 RELATION TO MAN. 



The Bird's Place in Nature'^ — About thirteen 

 thousand species of birds are known to science. The 

 structure of many of these has been carefully studied, 

 and all have been classified, at least provisionally. 

 Taken as a whole, the class Aves, in which all birds are 

 placed, is more clearly defined than any other group of 

 the higher animals. That is, the most unlike birds are 

 more closely allied than are the extremes among mam- 

 mals, fishes, or reptiles, and all living birds possess the 

 distinctive characters of their class. 



When compared with other animals, birds are found 

 to occupy second place in the scale of life. They stand 

 between mammals and reptiles, and are^ more closely re- 

 lated to the latter than to the former. In fact, certain 

 extinct birds so clearly connect living birds with rep- 

 tiles, that these two classes are sometimes placed in one 

 group — the Sauropsida. 



* On the structure of birds read Coues's Key to North American 

 Birds, Part II (Estes & Lauriat) ; Headley, The Structure and Life of 

 Birds : Xewton's Dictionary of Birds — articles, Anatomy of Birds and 

 Fossil Birds ; Martin and Moale's Handbook of Vertebrate Dissection, 

 Part II, How to Dissect a Bird; Shufeldt's Myology of the Raven 

 (Macmiilan Co.). 



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