APPENDIX 



visited and Emperor eggs secured is graphically told in 

 The Winter Journey. The question now arises, Has ' the 

 weirdest bird's-nesting expedition that has ever been made' 

 added appreciably to our knowledge of birds ? 



" It is admitted that birds are descended from bipedal 

 reptiles which flourished some millions of years ago — rep- 

 tiles in build not unlike the kangaroo. From Archaeo- 

 pteryx of Jurassic times we know primeval birds had teeth, 

 three fingers with claws on each hand, and a long lizard-like 

 tail provided with nearly twenty pairs of well-formed true 

 feathers. But unfortunately neither this lizard-tailed bird, 

 nor yet the fossil birds found in America, throw any light 

 on the origin of feathers. Ornithologists and others who 

 have devoted much time to the study of birds have as a 

 rule assumed that feathers were made out of scales, that 

 the scales along the margin of the hand and forearm and 

 along each side of the tail were elongated, frayed and other- 

 wise modified to form the wing and tail quills, and that 

 later other scales were altered to provide a coat capable of 

 preventing loss of heat. But as it happens, a study of the 

 development of feathers affords no evidence that they were 

 made out of scales. There are neither rudiments of scales 

 nor feathers in very young bird embryos. In the youngest 

 of the three Emperor embryos there are, however, feather 

 rudiments in the tail region, — the embryo was probably 

 seven or eight days old — but in the two older embryos 

 there are a countless number of feather rudiments, i.e. of 

 minute pimples known as papillae. 



" In penguins as in many other birds there are two 

 distinct crops of feather papillae, viz. : a crop of relatively 

 large papillae which develop into prepennae, the fore- 

 runners of true feathers (pennae), and a crop of small papil- 

 lae which develop into preplumulae, the forerunners of 

 true down feathers (plumulae). 



" In considering the origin of feathers we are not con- 

 cerned with the true feathers (pennae), but with the nest- 

 ling feathers (prepennae), and more especially with the 

 papillae from which the prepennae are developed. What 

 we want to know is. Do the papillae which in birds develop 



