244 FEATHERS 
birds are hatched, so that they are born clothed in a plumage of 
the second generation. 
There can be no doubt that the nesting habits and various 
other circumstances are closely correlated with the condition of 
the first plumage, and that this, taken as a whole, can only be 
used as a taxonomic character with great caution, while its con-’ 
stituent parts, the Neossoptiles themselves, are far less adaptive 
and therefore afford surer characters. 
The following types of Neossoptiles may be distinguished :— 
(1) The lowest and most primitive type is that of the Columba, 
and probably of Various Limicole. A newly-hatched Pigeon looks 
PEATHER OF NESTLING (Nyclicorax), Magnified. 
1. Sh. Horny sheath, not wholly shed, enclosing the base of eleven rami. Natural size. 
2. Single ramus of the same, supported by a ramus of the Teleoptile. 
very naked because each of its long feathers has a_bristle-hke 
appearance, being still enclosed in its sheath. When this is shed 
the feather spreads out in form of a brush, composed of about seven 
long and thin uniform branches, beset with very few lateral rays, 
and all springing without any rhachis from a short cylindrical 
portion, representing the calamus, which passes into the tips of the 
as yet hardly begun Teleoptile. 
(2) In Ciconia, Colymbus, Nycticorax, Phenicopterus, the Spheniscidx, 
and in Sula, the Neossoptile consists of a very short calamus, 
whence spring about a dozen long and delicate rami, each of which 
