A Bird’s-Eye View 
wild regions, called for truly heroic treatment. 
Thus, in camping out, he says it repeatedly 
happened, after he had cooked his meat, and 
not having any salt, that he used gunpowder 
for seasoning ! 
The scientific excuse for putting the lofty 
flamingo into the lowly company of ducks, etc., 
is in the fact that this towering bird has, in 
common with them, what probably no other 
birds at present possess—two rows of small 
projections along the inner edges of the bill, 
apparently the lingering remains of a dental 
apparatus once enjoyed by this class of beings. 
For the reader must know that, in olden times, 
birds had our own troublesome convenience of 
teeth, the evidence of which is found in skele- 
tons of the Cretacean epoch. 
The families thus far named in the ‘‘ swim- 
ming group,’’ especially swans, are but slightly 
aérial; but we now reach the most peculiar type 
of all, the penguin, ‘‘the flightless sea bird,’’ 
with almost rudimentary wings, quite like the 
flippers of a cetacean, without quills, but mov- 
ing freely at the shoulder-joint, so that they 
serve as paddles in the water, where they are 
usually worked alternately, in rotatory motion. 
This singular creature, of which there are sev- 
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