Feet and Legs 367 
the race as a whole they are forgotten, but it is well for 
us to think of them occasionally: their birth, the chance 
which came, which seemed so full of promise, which they 
so eagerly accepted and which betrayed them; the myriad 
little dead forms which gave up their lives in ages past, 
and upon whose bodies and whose efforts the birds of 
to-day have risen to their present high place in the scale 
of the creatures of the world. 
We might have used this same illustration, or many 
others like it, in connection with almost any other portion 
of the bird’s body. Although, indeed, it pertains more 
strictly to the mental characters, and so is in a way out- 
side the province of this volume, yet its application to 
physical adaptations is so evident that its omission would 
leave incomplete a most interesting phase of the possi- 
bilities of the adaptation of bird structure. 
Although among perching birds the bill is the important 
organ for procuring food, yet such birds as the Chewink, 
the White-throated Sparrow, and the jays, in search of 
small insects use their feet to scratch away dead leaves 
and rubbish, kicking backward with both feet at once. 
There are many curious things about toes to which 
we have not yet found the key. Who can tell why the 
Horned Lark, Pipit, and some other birds have such 
elongated claws on their rear toes? Perhaps the fact 
that these birds live almost entirely on the ground may 
have something to do with this peculiarity. Any one who 
has kept a cage full of small birds will soon have learned 
the fact that the claws of birds are continually growing. 
In a remarkably short time their claws become long and 
