﻿EXTERNAL ANATOMY. FEATHERS. 75 



CHAP. III. 



THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED THE FEATHERS, WINGS, 



TAIL, AND FEET OF BIRDS. 



(69.) We now come to the feathers, which are analo- 

 gous to the hair of quadrupeds, — not only covering and 

 protecting the hody in a similar way, but enabling that 

 body to be raised from the earth and carried through 

 the air. BufFon and others have given such long and 

 elaborate accounts of the structure of this extraordinary 

 clothing, and these accounts have been so often tran- 

 scribed into modern compilations, that we deem it un- 

 necessary to dwell upon such minute details. It must 

 be remembered, also, that it is the object of the trea- 

 tises composing this series to give the result of personal 

 study and observation, and merely to draw upon our 

 predecessors for that information (of which we shall 

 always acknowledge the source) which local or acci- 

 dental causes have prevented us from personally veri- 

 fying. It has been one of the consequences that have 

 resulted from the sudden favour into which natural 

 history has lately risen, that the task of giving ele- 

 mentary works to the public has, in nearly all instances, 

 fallen into the hands of persons who were the least 

 capable of performing the task ; and who, to use the 

 bitter but deserved sarcasm of a truly eminent natu- 

 ralist, are giving the public " stale systems, miserably 

 travestied." — " Natural history," as the same writer 

 justly observes, "is the very last thing that a mere 

 compiler should meddle with and yet it is from com- 

 pilers and tyros that we have new systems of classification, 

 and of nomenclature, mixed up with the indiscriminate 

 censure of authors, whom it is evident they have never 

 read, far less understood. Our readers, therefore, must 

 not expect, in the limited compass to which these 

 treatises are restricted, that they will find all that has 



