Birds of the Primeval World. 



I ig 



search of frogs and other delicacies, and 

 tried to behave themselves like birds. 



I am going to tell you something more 

 about these birds directly, and what pages 

 of the world's history their remains are 

 found in, but I want to point out to you 

 first that the whole world's history is, as I 

 said, full of riddles, and when the pages of 

 the great stone book were turned over, and 

 it was found that first came the lizards on 

 four legs, then that they took to walking 

 on their hind legs in the next page, then 

 that there was a lot of birds with lizards' 

 jaws in the next page, and ever after that 

 the birds put away their jaws and teeth 

 and took to wearing beaks as they do to 

 this day, everybody felt that this was a 

 riddle that he was bound to answer some- 

 how. The bones were there and it was no 

 good saying that they never had any flesh 

 on them. Let any wide-awake American 

 boy or girl come home late for dinner and 

 find nothing on the table but turkey bones 

 on all the plates, and you'll find it's no 

 good telling him or her that there had 

 been no turkey for dinner, and so it was 

 with the old-world birds' bones. There is 

 the riddle, and how are you going to an- 

 swer it ? 



Well, most people said there must have 

 been another creation before this one, but 

 the geologists, that is, the people who know 

 how to read the writing on the pages of 

 the great stone book, said that that was all 

 very fine, for if there had been one new 

 creation, there must have been a great 

 many, for after you turned back the leaves 

 with the crawling lizards on them, you 

 come to nothing but fishes, and when you 

 turn back still another page, there are 

 fishes, but they have no proper backbone; 

 still nearer the beginning of the book, 

 there were no fish even, but there were 

 still lobsters to be had if there had been 

 anybody to go after them, but the princi- 

 pal creatures that lived in that age of the 

 world were clams and oysters and such like 



mollusca — as people call them — and you 

 might think it a great pity that they were 

 so plentiful and no market for them, but 

 that is not the right way to look at it. 

 But when you come to turn back, to the 

 very earliest pages of the book there is 

 nothing so respectable even as a mollusk; 

 in all the world there was perhaps nothing 

 with so much sense as an oyster, and that 

 doesn't amount to much, although he has 

 a beard — nothing, in fact, but creatures 

 without brains or backbones or eyes, or in 

 fact anything else except stomachs and 

 trimmings, that is extensions which did for 

 legs, arms, feelers or anything else. So if 

 there must be a new creation to account 

 for the birds with teeth, that I was telling 

 you about, there must have been ever so 

 many new creations. Perhaps there were, 

 it's hard to say; but I'll tell you how 

 Charles Darwin read that riddle about 

 thirty years ago, and, although almost 

 everybody doubted when he first told it, 

 the more people think of it, the more it 

 looks as if it were the true answer. 



He said that God created some little 

 simple 'cells in the beginning, such as it is 

 not possible to see without the aid of a 

 microscope, they are so small, and that 

 these went on growing and giving birth to 

 others that differed a little from each other^ 

 and that owing to the different circum- 

 stances they were placed in, some took to 

 getting their living in one way, and some 

 in another, and that this had such an effect 

 on them that after a time they were no 

 more like each other in tastes, habits and 

 appearance than a respectable backwoods- 

 man and a member of the New York Stock 

 Exchange; then he said their children went 

 on growing more and more different, ac- 

 cording as their change of circumstances 

 and habits affected them, and in course of 

 time the infusoria, as they call the lower 

 creatures, begat molluscs, and that these 

 went on changing gradually and getting 

 more brains, until in time their young ones 



