WILD LIFE OF ORCHARD AND FIELD 



and artist, as well as the naturalist, to think 

 upon. 



But a bird is something more than a flitting 

 fairy, or an incarnation of song. It has sub- 

 stance and form; it moves swiftly, mysteriously, 

 from place to place, and looks out carefully for 

 its own protection and subsistence; it cunningly 

 builds a home, where it raises its young and teaches 

 them to care for themselves. The how and why 

 of some of these incidents of bird-life I want to 

 tell you I say some, for, after all, many of the 

 ways of our familiar birds are unexplained. 



The most prominent fact about a bird is a faculty 

 in which it differs from every other creature except 

 the bat and insects its power of flying. For 

 this purpose, the bird's arm ends in only one 

 long, slender finger, instead of a full hand. To this 

 are attached the quills and small feathers (coverts) 

 on the upper side, which make up the wing. Ob- 

 serve how light all this is: in the first place, the 

 bones are hollow; then the shafts of the feathers 

 are hollow; and, finally, the feathers themselves 

 are made of the most delicate filaments, inter- 

 locking and clinging to one another with little 

 grasping hooks of microscopic fineness. Well, 

 how does a bird fly? It seems simple enough to 

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