xvi OUTDOOR AND INDOOR ORNITHOLOGY 405 
you have no knowledge of a bird’s anatomy. To 
know that a bird never tumbles off his perch during 
sleep is something ; it is well to go on to a know- 
ledge of the machinery which keeps. him there. 
When you see that a bird’s neck is more supple than 
a snake, you wish to see the joint which allows such 
free play in all directions. An understanding of 
the problems of classification is impossible to an 
ornithologist who has not penetrated beyond the 
outside. The bird’s whole life depends upon his 
anatomy, and to try to study the former without the 
latter is somewhat like attempting the study of a 
. people’s history without the study of the people 
themselves. It will not do to stop short at the 
skeleton. You must get dead specimens and dissect 
them ; see the enormous size of the great pectoral 
muscles; inflate the air-sacks and see how spacious 
they are and how small in comparison are the lungs ; 
how the heart is far superior to a reptile’s, different 
also from a man’s, and yet equally efficient ; how the 
head is almost a feather-weight, and how the gizzard 
has taken the place of the grinders that would have 
burdened it; see what a complexity of muscles 
serves to bring about the perfect adjustment of the 
wing to every need. These and hundreds of things 
besides can only be realised by the aid of dissection. 
You can only half understand what you read on a 
subject such as this. When you have seen a good 
deal with your own eyes, you can realise not that 
only, but more of the same nature that you learn from 
books. But to trust entirely to the eyes of others for 
your knowledge of anatomy is as foolish as it is to 
