INTRODUCTION. 
A BIRD 
Is a feathered vertebrate animal; or, to deseribe it more fully, it is an air-preathing, 
warm-blooded, feathered, oviparous (egg-laying), vertebrate animal, having a four- 
chambered heart, and a complete double circulation. Birds occupy a place in nature 
intermediate between the mammals and the reptiles, and many naturalists consider a 
bird to be merely a modified reptile. Be that as it may; we are morally certain that 
thousands of years ago there existed on the earth huge, lizard-like birds, of many of 
which we know nothing. The oldest known form of which we have any actual 
knowledge is the celebrated Archwopteryx, a fossil found by Andreas Wagner, in the 
Oélitic slate of Solenhofen, Bavaria, in 1861. This reptile bird had a lizard-like 
tail bordered with feathers, and jaws armed with teeth. 
Of late years, many important osteological discoveries have been made, and from 
Dodo. Ostrich. Moa. 
the reconstructed skeletons we are able to form some idea of the size and shape of a 
few of the many huge and strange birds which lived and died in the forgotten past. 
The Harpagornis, an immense raptorial bird, or some similar monster, may have orig- 
inated the stories of the Roe of nursery lore. Still later, we have the Dodo of Mauri- 
tius, and the Moa of New Zealand, the latter a giant bird, much larger than the 
