4 GENERAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. 



leaves it doubtful whether, as has been asserted, Thomas Fuller was the 

 author. 



THE birds' place IN NATURE. 



The class of Birds is by far the largest aggregate of species of similar 

 appearance among the vertebrates. There is no doubt about its limits or 

 extent and the most inexperienced can recognize any living representative of 

 the group as well as the most scientific. By their feathers all may be known. 

 While these are homologous with scales and hairs, there is no gradation into 

 either. No bird is destitute of feathers and no other animal has any. Numer- 

 ous, too, as are the variations in form, such are of minor value and reducible 

 to a common general form. A bird, then, is a feathered animal with two legs 

 representing the hind legs of quadrupeds, two wings representing the fore legs 

 of other animals, and a head with a bill covered with a horny sheath. 



The place these animals fill in nature and their relations to others ai'e not 

 so evident. In ancient times it was assumed that there were four elements, 

 earth, air, water, and fire. Animals were apportioned to each of these elements 

 and the Birds were the special inhabitants of the air. In the account of creation 

 in Genesis, the inhabitants of the more tenuous elements were created together 

 while those of the earth were called later into being. "God said, Let the 

 waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life and fowl 

 that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven", and that 

 creation marked "the fifth day." Similar was the idea of the philosophers 

 of the great .nations of antiquity. Plato called the inhabitants of the air 

 Xeronomika in contradistinction to those of the water (Hygrotrophika) and 

 those of the earth (Xerotrophika). Ovid sang the myth of creation in terms 

 that are almost a paraphrase of the Hebrew hierophant's narrative. 



An early Italian author of a work on ornithology, Ulysses Aldrovandi 

 who published in 1599, was influenced by such considerations. After outlin- 

 ing the subjects he proposes to treat of, he determines: 



"Among these subjects I judge that the first place in the publication should! 

 be given to that which treats of animals, as being a nobler subject than the 

 others. For as Plato reckons four great divisions of animals, corresponding 

 to the four elements, earth, water, air, and fire, I think it expedient, upon due 

 reflection, to begin with birds, that division seeming to offer itself first in 

 order; for as to those corresponding to fire, I consider that none such exist.i 

 Although certain insects fall under the aerial division, some with conspicuousl 

 wings, like the bee, and others with concealed, as the beetle, the order of pro- 

 cedure may well be assigned to birds, which fly with regular and not with! 

 membranaceous wings". 



All such views were long ago discarded, and the lesson in science has beeni 

 learned that the best way to look upon animals is from an objective point of] 



