64 The Bird 



thought of bestowing an encomium on a jaw-bone, and 

 yet the history of the lower part of a sparrow's beak 

 opens a vista so far-reaching that the mind of man falters 

 at the thought; it shows the last roll of an evolving 

 which, could w^e follow it back, would merge the man, the 

 whale, the bird, the lizard, the fish, into one. 



Let us look at some of the bones of a sparrow or 

 dove or chicken. One way to do this is to place a dead 

 bird in a box pierced with numerous holes, leave it near 

 an ant-hill, and wait for the industrious insects to do 

 their work. Another way is to clean as much flesh as 

 possible from the skeleton and deposit the bones in a 

 pail of water. In a few days they can be washed white 

 and clean. Perhaps the easiest way of all is to save what 

 bones you can of a boiled chicken. These are of large 

 size and will show us all we wish to know. 



The framework of a bird consists of a long jointed 

 string of bones called vertebrae, with the brain-box or 

 skull at one end and a blunt tail at the other. Near 

 the middle, the outcurving ribs extend around the organs 

 of the body, and, with the breast-bone, form an encircling 

 protective sheath. Two short series of bones project in 

 front of the ribs — the bones of the wings, — and two more 

 behind the ribs — those of the legs and feet; while at the 

 point of attachment of each of these four limbs there 

 radiates a trio of bones. 



The back-bone is the fundamental and oldest part of 

 the skeleton, and though we cannot follow its evolution 

 directly backward through the long ages, yet there is 

 sufficient gradation among living creatures to give us 



