CHAPTER XXI. 

 INTRODUCTION TO BIRDS. 



Birds belong to the class Aves. This word is the 

 plural of the Latin noun, avis, meaning a bird. Birds 

 constitute a much smaller class of animals than do the 

 insects. The Arthropoda, the branch of the animal 

 kingdom to which the insects belong, is the most numerous 

 of all the groups, comprising more known sorts or species 

 of animals than do all the other branches put together. 

 Williston places the number of flies alone, known at the 

 present time at eighty thousand. And every year 

 witnesses discoveries of Arthropoda hitherto unknown, 

 as the study of familiar regions becomes more intensive, 

 or as new earth and ocean regions are explored for the 

 first time. Just now, in these days, are appearing accounts 

 of the explorations of several traveler naturalists in 

 South American, West Indian, and East Indian lands, 

 men who are doing much as did men in the days of 

 Linnaeus, when they traveled into foreign lands for the 

 sake of seeing the wonderful sights of Nature in the way 

 of rock, plant, or strange animal. But in these latter 

 days, our travelers have to guide them all the great body 

 of truth which it has been man's privilege, under God, to 

 discover, from the days of Linnaeus down to the present 

 time. 



Life is the most wonderful of all the facts of creation, 

 and only life can understand life and discover its meaning. 

 Its full meaning is always a little beyond the compre- 



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