WILD LIFE OF ORCHARD AND FIELD 



and artist, as well as the naturalist, to think 

 upon. 



But a bird is something more than a flitting 

 fairy, or an incarnation of song. It has sub- 

 stance and form; it moves swiftly, mysteriously, 

 from place to place, and looks out carefully for 

 its own protection and subsistence; it cunningly 

 builds a home, where it raises its young and teaches 

 them to care for themselves. The how and why 

 of some of these incidents of bird-life I want to 

 tell you — I say some, for, after all, many of the 

 ways of our familiar birds are unexplained. 



The most prominent fact about a bird is a faculty 

 in which it differs from every other creature except 

 the bat and insects — its power of flying. For 

 this purpose, the bird's arm ends in only one 

 long, slender finger, instead of a full hand. To this 

 are attached the quills and small feathers (coverts) 

 on the upper side, which make up the wing. Ob- 

 serve how light all this is: in the first place, the 

 bones are hollow ; then the shafts of the feathers 

 are hollow; and, finally, the feathers themselves 

 are made of the most delicate filaments, inter- 

 locking and clinging to one another with little 

 grasping hooks of microscopic fineness. Well, 

 how does a bird fly? It seems simple enough to 



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