CEA PTER. XT. 
WAR AND WEAPONS AMONG THE BIRDS. 
ConTRASTED with our last reflections comes the sad 
commentary upon the birds’ moral progress—that 
bluff and battle are such conspicuous features of 
their history. Like our most civilized nations, while 
professing the best of feelings for their fellow, the 
birds, if they do not make large appropriations for de- 
fenses, at least secure peace with honor by a large dis- 
play of warlike talk and tactics. Still, as we shall see, 
the folks in feathers, like their neighbors, show in 
their higher development a tendency to use weapons 
as a last resort and to depend upon milder and more 
refined means of settling disputes. 
While some of the Dinosaurs had spurs on their 
thumbs, as a certain ploverlike bird has now, it is prob- 
able, primarily, that birds inherited no weapons from 
their ancestors except teeth ; and, like all early weap- 
ons, these were developed at the demands of prey 
taking rather than of war among themselves. With 
the change of the character of the food these were 
lost, especially as the extra advantages of flight, run- 
ning, and pouncing from above came about. This is 
all that we can say about why a bird lost its teeth. 
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