CHAPTER XV 



TAILS 



E have found that almost every organ of a bird's 

 body may be compared directly with the corre- 

 tl sponding structure in the body of a lizard or 

 of some reptile, and the tail is no exception: although 

 a lizard with a fan-shaped group of feathers sprouting 

 from the root of his tail would certainlv be an anomalv; 

 and even if we substitute scales for the feathers, the result 

 would be ridiculous and unmeaning. But glance at the 

 photograph of the tail of our ancient, original-bird ac- 

 quaintance, the Archseopteryx, Fig. 315, which was taken 

 expressl}' for this purpose. 



Take twenty feathers and arrange them as in Fig. 314 a, 

 representing the tail of Archa^opters'x ; then rearrange 

 them as in 314 6, corres])onding to the tail of modern birds, 

 and the whole matter will be clear. Archa^opteryx had 

 twenty bones in its tail, all separate, long and slender, and 

 arranged end to end, just as are the liones of a lizard's 

 tail to-day. But in the case of the bird of olden time 

 a pair of feathers grew out, one on each side of the tail- 

 bone, making forty tail-feathers in all. As we have seen, 



this bird was rather weak-winged and probabl}- more 



398 



