232 BIRD LIFE 



anatomist went out of his way to notice that there were 

 exceptions to the rule, and that these were the birds of 

 greatest powers of flight. The Albatrosses, Swifts, and 

 Swallows have, like ourselves, honest, well-filled marrow- 

 bones. We are apt, the best of us, to read into the 

 text our own ideas, and to see the things which best 

 fit in with them : like the boy with a taste for birds 

 and sport who, when asked in his examination what he 

 knew of the circumstances of the death of Ahab, 

 answered, ' One drew a bow at a Vulture, and killed 

 the king.' 



To form some notion of what the evolution of a bird 

 from a lizard implies, it is enough to read two articles 

 in Newton's Dictionary of Birds, by Professor Gadow, 

 the one on ' Feathers/ the other on ' Colours,' and then 

 remembering that no lizard has feathers, nor so far 

 as we know ever had one to pay a visit to the Natural 

 History Museum. 



In an alcove to the west of the Great Central Hall is 

 a case containing, with other marvels, magnified models 

 of a section of the web of a flight-feather a perfect 

 mechanical contrivance for combining, by means of 

 elaborate hooks and eyes and other devices, lightness 

 and strength. The arrangements for decoration are 

 even more amazing than the mechanism of the frame. 



In the box used for painting birds, Nature, so far as 

 the learned have as yet been able to ascertain, has only 

 five cakes of actual colours. There is a black, more 

 than half of it pure carbon ; two distinct reds, one of 

 which, containing a good deal of copper, dyes the water 



