BIRDS OF THE PRIMEVAL WORLD. 



AS I said before, there were two very dif- 

 ferent types of bird in those days, the 

 divers and the flyers, and of course you want 

 to know 

 their 

 names, 

 but as 

 Professor 



Marsh, their godfather, gave 

 them the most learned names he 

 could think of, they are rather 

 hard to remember. The divers 

 are called Hesperoniis, and the 

 high-flyers Icthyoniis, and, if you 

 know Greek, you will easily guess 

 what the names mean. You see 

 they are both called ornis, and 

 oriiis simply means a bird; hesper 

 means western, and icthy means 

 like a fish, so Hesperoniis means 

 the bird of the west; but to en- 

 able you to understand why they 

 called the other Ictkyomis, it must be 

 explained that it was not because it 

 caught fish, but because it had back 

 bones like a fish. If you have ever 

 broken a fish's backbone you will have 

 noticed that it is made of a lot of small 

 bones, each of which is shaped like a cup 

 at both ends, but if 

 you break the back- 

 bone of a bird or a 

 hare, you will see that 

 the several bones fit 

 into each other by 

 quite a different ar- 

 rangement. Now when you see a bird with 

 a fish's backbone and a lizard's jaws, you 

 must admit that you have a missing link that 

 agrees very well with the theory that birds 

 did not start into life suddenly, but were 

 the descendants of a long line of ancestry 

 which differ more and more from them as 



you go further and further back in the 

 family records. 



The Hesperoniis (you will remember that 

 that is the western bird) was a big bird 

 something like the great auk or the 

 penguin, only it had absolutely no 

 wings at all. Of course they went 

 ashore on the rocks to lay their eggs 

 and hatch their young, and as there 

 were no seals nor sea lions in those 

 days they had it all to themselves, but 

 the greater part of their time was 

 spent in the water. Their legs were 

 long and very strong, and 

 when stretched out in div- 

 ing, the bird was about six 

 feet long. The skull was 

 narrow like a lizard's, and 

 they hadn't more than half 

 as much brain as a loon, or 

 any other liv- 

 ing bird of 

 their own size. 

 ^V h a t e V e r 

 changes living 

 creatures have 

 gone through 

 since the 

 world began, 

 the highest 

 types of every 

 age have more 

 brains than 

 the highest 

 types of ear- 

 lier ages. The 

 head and jaw was about ten niches long; the 

 lower jaw was armed with sharp pointed 

 teeth over its whole length; the upper jaw 

 had teeth too, but not in front. These teeth 

 were not set in sockets like a horse's or a 

 dog's, but in grooves like a reptile's, but the 

 backbone was a genuine bird's. Like the 



SKELETON OF HESPERORNIS RESTORED, }i NATURAL SIZE. 



