37 
the chest, the two anterior, and posterior thoracic. Three are in 
front of the chest, and two behind it. From most of these, com- 
munications are given off to the bones of the vertebral column, to 
the humerus, to the thigh bones, to the breast bone, and to the ribs. 
The organ of voice in singing birds is not the larynx, but the so- 
called lower larynx or syrinx, which is developed where the trachea 
divides into the two bronchial tubes, and is altogether a strange 
structure to which some anatomists have given great attention. 
Some young birds on being hatched are able to shift for themselves, 
and are covered with down, while others are born naked and help- 
less, and require food from their parents for some time. Of the 
former section an ordinary chicken is a familiar example, while a 
young thrush or a sparrow illustrates the latter. You may, 
perhaps, many of you. have heard the expression ‘‘ Pigeon’s Milk.” 
For the first three days after the egg is hatched the parent bird 
feeds the young one exclusively with a milky fluid which is formed 
in the crop, hence the expression. 
Amongst the birds of prey we find that the female is generally a 
larger and more powerful bird, and it therefore was preferred in 
Falconry. As to the way in which Vultures discover their prey, the 
opinion of naturalists has for a long time been divided, and contro- 
versy has waxed hot upon the subject, the question being whether 
the vulture possesses a more than usually keen sense of sight, or 
whether his sense of smell is so powerful as to enable him to scent 
a decaying carcase at a greater distance than other birds can do. 
The experience of various travellers seems to prove that both senses 
are possessed in no ordinary degree, but that it is by their keen 
sight that vultures generally find their food. Supposing that an 
animal is wounded, and escapes from the hunter, his course is 
marked by a vulture soaring high in the air; another circling far 
away on the horizon sees the first bird fly down, and follows in his 
track, and so on, until a large company is feeding on the carcase. 
This action of vultures is well described in Hiawatha, Book 
x1x. :— 
“ Never stoops the soaring vulture 
On his quarry in the desert, 
On the sick or wounded bison, 
But another vulture, watching 
From his high aérial look-out, 
Sees the downward plunge, and follows; 
And a third pursues the second, 
Coming from the invisible et ier, 
First a speck, and then a vulture, 
Till the air is dark with pinions,” 
Canon Tristram, in writing of Griffon vultures, says :—‘* May we 
not conjecture that the process is as follows: The bird that first 
descries his quarry descends from his : levation at once; another, 
sweeping the horizon at a still greater distance, observes hig 
