BIRDS OF THE ROCKS. 173 



some processes of progressive evolution, the 

 fact does not conflict with my dream. It 

 would seem that nature has often turned back 

 from a partly accomplished purpose, as if upon 

 discovering a shorter and better way, and it 

 may be that the voices of nightingale and 

 mocking-bird have not yet reached the perfec- 

 tion belonging to some singer of aeons ago. The 

 syrinx of Arck&opUryx may have been perfect, 

 and yet the bird itself, with its cumbersome 

 vertebrate appendage, may have been cast 

 aside in order to begin another line of experi- 

 ment, so to speak, in the direction of physical 

 harmony. In such case the process would 

 probably begin from the first again. It may 

 appear that this really did take place ; for note 

 that, after a vast geological space of time fol- 

 lowing the extermination of the highly organ- 

 ized Arck&opteryX) we see the lower orders 

 caught in the grip of the rocks, as if nature 

 were again toiling up, but by a different route, 

 to reach the level of the oscines, which appears 

 to have been accomplished when the Palceo- 

 spiza bella came forth in the tertiary age. This 

 species, buried in the shale amidst the insects 

 upon which it used to feed, may be taken as a 

 type of the fossil song-bird and should have 

 been named simply Melospiza, as the first of 

 that genus and of the family Fringillidce, just 

 as we say, Adam or Eve ! 



When we come to think of it, it is next to 

 miraculous that any traces of the palaeozoic 

 birds are left to us at all. Can we well, con- 

 ceive how a sparrow or a blue-jay of our time 

 shall be imprisoned in earth so as to be quar- 

 ried out of a stone-bed some millions of years 

 hence ? Let us pause and reflect a moment 



