64 The Bird 
thought of bestowing an encomium on a jaw-bone, and 
yet the history of the lower part of a sparrow’s beak 
opens a vista so far-reaching that the mind of man falters 
at the thought; it shows the last roll of an evolving 
which, could we follow it back, would merge the man, the 
whale, the bird, the lizard, the fish, into one. 
Let us look at some of the bones of a sparrow or 
dove or chicken. One way to do this is to place a dead 
bird in a box pierced with numerous holes, leave it near 
an ant-hill, and wait for the industrious insects to do 
their work. Another way is to clean as much flesh as 
possible from the skeleton and deposit the bones in a 
pail of water. In a few days they can be washed white 
and clean. Perhaps the easiest way of all is to save what 
bones you can of a boiled chicken. These are of large 
size and will show us all we wish to know. 
The framework of a bird consists of a long jointed 
string of bones called vertebra, with the brain-box or 
skull at one end and a blunt tail at the other. Near 
the middle, the outcurving ribs extend around the organs 
of the body, and, with the breast-bone, form an encircling 
protective sheath. Two short series of bones project in 
front of the ribs—the bones of the wings,—and two more 
behind the ribs—those of the legs and feet; while at the 
point of attachment of each of these four limbs there 
radiates a trio of bones. 
The back-bone is the fundamental and oldest part of 
the skeleton, and though we cannot follow its evolution 
directly backward through the long ages, yet there is 
sufficient gradation among living creatures to give us 
