392 



ZOOLOGY 



Perching 

 birds; 

 sparrows 

 and their 

 relatives 



swifts, trogons, toucans, and woodpeckers. 

 They are mainly arboreal, and the young are 

 born blind and helpless. There are over 550 

 species of humming birds known, exclusively 

 confined to the New World. In the Old 

 World tropics their place is taken to some 

 extent by the sun birds, which are, however, 

 Passeriformes, with no real relationship to the 

 humming birds. The fairy humming bird of 

 Cuba is the smallest bird known, being only 

 2| inches long. The swifts, though resembling 

 the swallows, are not at all closely related to 

 them ; the swallows are Passeriformes, and are 

 structurally nearer to the sparrows than to the 

 swifts. 



Passeriformes. The largest and highest group, 

 which is among the birds what the Composite 

 are among the plants. Wonderfully successful 

 in the struggle for existence, presenting in- 

 numerable families and genera adapted to 

 different modes of life, feeding on almost every 

 kind of animal and vegetable matter, but 



From "Animate Creation " 

 FIG. 165. A group of finches. 



