DISTRIBUTION OF ORGANISMS. 181 



pearance of the feathers, the presence of a diaphragm in 

 the viscera, and other structural minutiae. 



The three subdivisions of the Swimmers are with tole- 

 rable distinctness seen passing each into its several progeny 

 among the waders. Looking at once to external features, 

 and to habits and characters, we readily select, as the de- 

 scendants of the anatine birds, the Ardeidce (Herons, Spoon- 

 bills, and Storks), the most brilliantly plumaged of the 

 "Waders, as the Ducks are of the Swimmers, and equally 

 addicted to a foul kind of animal diet, being, as is well 

 known, amongst the most active scavengers of eastern and 

 other cities. The anserine birds claim a progeny in the 

 GruidcE (Cranes), whose form of head, and the position of 

 the eye, as well as the elevation of the hind toe upon the 

 leg, remind us of that family, while their constancy to a 

 pure vegetable diet is equally conspicuous. The Phalle- 

 ropes, Gallinales, and Coots, reappear in a variety of forms? 

 possibly forming inferior divisions or branches, yet evidently 

 all much allied, the EaUidce (Rails), Otida (Bustards), par- 

 tially cursorial in figure, the Charadriadce (Plovers), and the 

 ScolopacidfE (Snipes, Sandpipers, and Curlews). All of these 

 birds are mixed feeders, of gentle and timid character, with 

 a tendency to walking power, which in some instances en- 

 ables the animal to escape more surely by threading the brake 

 than by flight. This last property may be connected in some 

 way with the form of the feet shown by the grebes, phalle- 

 ropes, rails, and other genera of the subdivision, these being 

 not webbed, like those of the other swimming birds, but lo- 

 bated ; that is, having a separate lobe expanded along the 

 sides of each toe. 



The origin of all the bird life as yet spoken of, was that 

 ocean which we now see beating the northern shores of the 

 two great continents. There is the nativity of all these 

 Swimmers ; there do they yet live in sea and air darkening 

 abundance. Swimming birds, corresponding to them, 

 scarcely exist anywhere in southern oceans ; there is but one 

 development of anatine birds in that quarter, in the geese and 



