April 

are chiefly shore-birds, commonly found on the 
borders of the ocean, lake, bog, or stream, or 
wading in the shallows where they find the ani- 
mal food on which they chiefly subsist, and 
which they are so evidently adapted to procure, 
by their long bills and necks, slender bodies, 
and long legs. The most beautiful of water- 
fowl are in this class, such as the cranes, storks, 
and herons of the Northern States, and the 
gorgeous flamingoes of Florida, all of these 
about four feet in length and several feet high. 
The ‘‘swimmers’’ are of a different type, 
being generally thick-set, short-limbed, and 
web-footed—an organization that makes them 
as much and often more at home in the water 
than on the wing. The prevailing type of this 
class is illustrated in swans, ducks, gulls, and 
loons, while a few of the families, like the 
terns and petrels, are more aérial in form. 
Nature shades off one class of her creatures into 
another, and there is no impassable gulf fixed 
between ‘‘ waders ’’ and << swimmers,’’ however 
pronouncedly different the two .types are in 
general. Even among the ‘‘ waders ’’ there are 
different degrees of the web-foot, from the total 
absence of it in many, up to the avocet, which 
is almost fully web-footed. Nature seems very 
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