14 CHILDHOOD OF ANIMALS 



unlike their parents, but none the less fall into the second group of 

 young animals. The shape of the body, the head with its bill and 

 long neck, the wings, the absence of a true tail, and the single pair 

 of legs with the slender toes leave us in no doubt as to the group of 

 the animal kingdom to which the most naked chick belongs. Those 

 with only a slight knowledge of the families into which birds are 

 divided are able to tell, from the shape of the head and the beak, 

 and the number, arrangement and formation of the toes, whether 

 the young creature is a perching bird, a parrot, a bird-of-prey, a 

 wader, a duck or goose, or some kind of fowl or pheasant. Ornitho- 

 logists who have a minute acquaintance with the structure of birds 

 could place the young bird more accurately, but even the most 

 expert would sometimes make mistakes and often be at a loss. 

 The difficulty is due to many reasons. The first is ignorance. Eggs 

 and nestlings are a succulent prey for an innumerable host of 

 enemies, such as flesh-eating mammals of all kinds, and many reptiles 

 and even other birds. And so the nests and eggs and young are 

 protected by innumerable devices. They are carefully hidden or 

 placed in inaccessible spots ; they are shaped or coloured so as to 

 be invisible against their natural background. The parents visit 

 them by stealth, protect them with fury, or cunningly mislead those 

 in search of them. Eggs, moreover, and the skins of mature birds 

 are objects that are beautiful and attractive in the cabinet of a 

 collector, or in the cases of a museum, and not difficult to prepare 

 and to preserve. But nestlings and fledglings, even when they can 

 be got, must be kept as draggled little objects in spirits of wine, 

 a delight only to the expert naturalist. I should like to add that 

 although memories of boyhood, the human zest for sport and avidity 

 for knowledge steel the heart of the naturalist collecting eggs or 

 birds, there is an appealing quality of confident helplessness about 

 nestlings that few could resist. I have seen a German professor 

 putting young fishes into hot pickle with tears on his face, but the 

 born collector of young birds is generally hanged for more lucrative 

 crime. In any case, our knowledge of nestlings is defective. 



Even with complete knowledge, I doubt if young birds could be 

 assigned to their proper species as correctly as similar identifications 

 could be made in the case of mammals. For all birds, in the elements 

 of their structure, are closely akin. Even the great families are diffi- 

 cult to separate, and species are distinguished chiefly by external 

 structures and especially by the differences in plumage. Young 

 birds may be naked, and so show nothing of the most distinctive 



