BIRDS OF THE ROCKS. 169 
head and of the sternum are not all present, 
but the fragmentary wings lie in place, and one 
leg with the foot attached is crooked back be- 
side the long twenty-jointed tail. The feath- 
ers are unmistakably those of a flying bird, 
and the feet are formed for tree life. It must 
have been a most remarkable figure in the air, 
especially if its plumage was gay-colored, with 
its long, wriggling caudal streamer floating 
out behind, and its claw-tipped wings spread 
on either side of its reptile-like body. One 
may assume that its voice was a blending of 
the tones of a toad and the notes of a crow— 
the first rude elements of song. Almost un- 
imaginable ages have passed since the last sur- 
viving Archeopteryx was caught in a rock ma- 
trix and forced to mould a cast for the delecta- 
tion of poets and scientists. Indeed we must 
refrain from attempting to span the gulf of 
time between this lone relic and the next bird- 
trace appearing in the earth’s formations. No 
more feathered vertebrate tails come to light. 
Lapsing on towards the perfect form, the bird- 
life, like that of certain reptiles, sloughed the 
heavy caudal appendage and gathered closer 
together the chief centres of its animal struct- 
ure. From the cretaceous formation of the 
rocks, forward to the most recent disclosures 
of the caves and peat bogs, this change seems 
to have gone hand in hand with a general re- 
modelling of the whole sphere of mundane life. 
For a vast period of time it appears that the 
birds flourished, in monstrous development of 
beak and teeth, the devouring demons of land 
and sea. The eocene rocks furnish a wealth 
of fragmentary fossils suggesting a variety of 
bird-forms, mostly of giant size, waders and 
