﻿EXTERNAL ANATOMY. WING FEATHERS. $5 



treme shortness of their quills that they differ externally 

 from the coots and other short-winged birds which 

 fly. The wing of the penguin (fig. 4>7-), however, 



is of a totally different construction. In form it is 

 more like the fin of a fish : the feathers assume the 

 appearance of narrow scales, and they lie upon each other 

 like the true scales of fishes (a), without any inequality 

 of size, further than that those adjoining the bones (6) 

 are smaller than such as are placed in the situation of 

 the quills, (c) As instruments of flight they are of course 

 entirely useless ; but when the bird is once in the water 

 (which it rarely leaves), their fin-like wings become a 

 pair of powerful oars, urging on these birds at a prodi- 

 gious rate. All the accounts, in fact, given by navi- 

 gators, favour the belief that the penguins, however 

 helpless upon land, are yet the swiftest family of swim- 

 mers in the feathered creation, just as the swallows, 

 which represent them among the Insessores, are the 

 swiftest flyers. Thus does Nature, under structures the 

 most opposite, preserve her uniformity of design, and 

 tenaciously adhere to that law which gives a pre-emin- 

 ent celerity of motion to the natatorial type. Thus, also, 

 does it appear, that notwithstanding the vast difference 

 in their conformation, the swallow and the penguin 

 pursue their prey with a rapidity far superior to that 

 which can be accomplished by any other birds. 



(86.) There are a few deviations from the ordinary 

 shape and regularity of the quills, which may be here 

 noticed, but which do not affect the general form of the 

 wing. One of these consists in the sudden contraction, or 

 unusual development of some of the quills only; the reason 

 of which deviation is entirely unknown. In most of 



