CHAPTER XV 



TAILS 



E have found that ahiiost every organ of a bird's 

 l)ody may be compared directly with the corre- 

 sponding structure in the body of a hzard or 

 of some reptile, and the tail is no exception: although 

 a lizard with a fan-shaped group of feathers sprouting 

 from the root of his tail would certainly be an anomaly; 

 and even if we substitute scales for the feathers, the result 

 would be ridiculous and unmeaning. But glance at the 

 photograph of the tail of our ancient, original-bird ac- 

 quaintance, the ArchcTpopteryx, Fig. 315, which was taken 

 expressly for this purpose. 



Take twenty feathers and arrange them as in Fig. 314 a, 

 representing the tail of Archseopters^x ; then rearrange 

 them as in 314 6, corresponding to the tail of modern birds, 

 and the whole matter will be clear. Archseopteryx had 

 twenty bones in its tail, all separate, long and slender, and 

 arranged end to end, just as are the bones of a lizard's 

 tail to-day. But in the case of the bird of olden time 

 a pair of feathers grew out, one on each side of the tail- 

 bone, making forty tail-feathers in all. As we have seen, 



this bird was rather w^eak-winged and probably more 



398 



