CHAPTER. V. 
THE CUT OF A BIRD’S FROCK. 
Tue color of a bird’s coat has been much empha- 
sized since Mr. Darwin found it a matter of so much 
significance, but it is not known so generally that the 
cut of the garment, its gores, seams, plackets, puffs, 
ete., tell more of a bird’s position in feathered society 
than its colors. But fissures and rents here do not 
mean poverty or a low condition—in fact, rather the 
contrary, since only the lowest birds now have cloth- 
ing over the entire body. 
It would be very tedious, even if it could be done, 
to notice all the various arrangements of plumage in 
the different groups of birds. The feathers grow in 
rather symmetrical tracts, with intervening bare spaces 
and, at times, with interrupting bare patches, causing 
forks and various changes in these tracts. 
The most characteristic of these are the tracts on 
the top and bottom of the bird, which are normally 
median. That beneath in most birds has rather con- 
stantly in the center of it a bare space, which may be 
held there by the habit and effect of incubation, but 
the bare spot in the back tract is more variable in its 
position, and is often entirely wanting. 
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