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 body in a similar way, hut enabling that 
body to raised dfrom 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 resnlt 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- 
denti 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 
