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 Archceopteryx 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 Archczopteryx, 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 



