34: HOME STUDIES IN NATURE. 



inanity whenever birds treat me in the manner these 

 robins did. There ought to be a rigid law enforced 

 to protect our songsters against such vandals, who have 

 never done as much good in the world as one pair of 

 birds they have destroyed. 



If birds were to discuss their own zoological position 

 they might show abundant reason why they were at 

 the head of creation, allowing them to use the degree 

 of perfection of special organs or embryonic sequence 

 as tokens of rank. The eminent naturalist Yon Baer 

 discusses the rank we hold in the scale of being as fol- 

 lows : 



"We are not in all respects the head of the animal 

 creation. In some points other creatures are further 

 developed, more highly organized than ourselves, and 

 we carry about in our bodies, as permanent structures, 

 things which are but temporary and embryonic with 

 them. In birds whose great organic specialty is flight, 

 at a certain stage of the life within the egg the lungs 

 are free in the chest and the bones are full of marrow, 

 as ours are all our lives long. It is not till afterwards 

 that the lungs become tied down back of the chest, 

 that air-sacs communicating with them spread over vari- 

 ous parts of the body, and the bones become hollow and 

 thin. These are features specially adapted for flight, 

 later [higher] developments of which we show no sign. 

 In the same way it cannot be denied that feathers are 

 more complex, and therefore higher developments of 

 the simple structure we call hairs." 



