I 
502 PROCEEDINGS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES. 
the periphery of the branching classes. In the vertebrate branch the 
birds hold an intermediate position, and, intelligently studied, throw a 
flood of light backward and forward over the animal world. Taking their 
rise between the reptile and the mammal they combine with the ornithic; 
both reptilian and mammalian characters, but the finest development o 
brain, with its accompanying delicacy of organization, exists at the ex- 
tremities of the ornithic branch where the true bird type is found, puri- 
fied, so to speak, of both reptilian and mammalian tendencies. Here we 
find the songsters and those birds which are most responsive to the in- 
fluence of man. The axial line for the class of birds, like that of the 
animal kingdom, is marked by the carrying forward of a mingled stream. 
It is only near the terminal branches that the pure bird-like forms, the — 
blossoms of the type are found. 
he foot in Archseopteryx anticipates that found in the highest groups 
of birds, and peculiarities of structure drawn from the mammal are not 
wholly lost until the family of the parrots is passed. Here a rudiment of 
the diaphragm is found. In the animal kingdom the uncreated man, ex- 
isting only in the conception of Deity, lifts the whole animal creation and 
holds it at a higher level. 
Mr. Merna also said, in regard to Cassia, that physiologically the leaf 
was considered the parent of the axillary bud, — and that ** adventitious " 
buds was a term created to account for buds not axillary. The absorption 
of the bud by Cassia, and the existence of buds, one above another, in 
other plants, without connection with the petiole, and with the strongest 
one the farthest removed from the petiole, indicated that the leaf was 
er an enemy than an aid to bud development; and that the classes of 
axil and adventitious buds, had no physiological law to separate them. 
Lew 
Mn. 
the Embankments of the Mound Builders. Mr. Morgan considered them 
as the bases (built for defensive purposes) of the pueblos or villages of 
that race of men. 




