BIRDS AND FEATHERS 



CHAPTER VI 



Birds 



THE most uninitiated can recognize without the 

 faintest difficulty the characters that distinguish 

 birds from other animals. But it must not be assumed 

 at once that to define them as feathered bipeds is quite 

 enough. For, to begin with, birds are scaly as well as 

 feathered, thus showing a glimpse, externally visible, of 

 their unquestioned relationship to the lower lying 

 reptiles. The feet are always scaly, in parts at least, 

 and generally entirely so. Anyhow, no creature that 

 is not a bird has feathers or even anything at all 

 approaching to feathers, in nature ; and per contra, no 

 bird is without feathers. More than this, all birds 

 possess wings, even the wrongly called Apteryx, which 

 has tiny wings concealed beneath its feathers. The 

 term wing here, it will be observed, does not necessarily 

 mean an organ of flight. Though all birds possess 

 wings, all birds cannot fly. Besides the Apteryx, the 

 ostrich tribe generally are purely cursorial, and so are 

 certain rails and one or two other birds. What is meant 

 by wing in this sense is a fore limb, actually and accur- 

 ately comparable to the arm of man or the forelegs of 

 a cat, in which the number of fingers is reduced from 

 five to three, and the proportions of the remaining 

 bones is somewhat altered from what is found in reptiles 

 and mammals. This being the case, all birds are bipedal, 

 which is another distinguishing character, though it is 



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