3 6 5 
LOVE THAT LIVES. 
forms would escape any such entombment. 
So it is that the remains of our feathered forms 
have been rendered so rare, and compara- 
tively so few examples have been discovered 
through all these long ages. This absence ol 
aviarian fossils furnishes us with a very good 
reason why this class has cut such an insignifi- 
cant figure in the study of the physical his- 
tory of our earth. Some idea may be formed 
of the meagerness of this material, from the 
fact that in this article nearly all the exam- 
ples known to science, through all time, are 
mentioned, and my illustrations present fig- 
ures of all the more important of the feathered 
forms that are now extinct. If a catalogue of 
all the extant specimens were printed in or- 
dinary type, the volume that contained the 
record would be of no very great size ; and 
think of the countless millions of birds or 
animals with feathers that during these long, 
long ages have lived and subsequently per- 
ished. Regarding the history of our feath- 
ered races in the past, read from the fossil 
records that have come to us, as a history 
of the class and nothing more, irrespective 
of anything we may learn of it that bears 
upon the physical history of our planet, we 
find that, starting from their present represen- 
tatives as an isolated and lovely group of 
animated beings, their most recently extinct 
forms differ in no essential particular from the 
living ones ; for instance, if the pied duck 
could be reproduced, he would not figure in 
our fauna as an oddity, as the dodo certainly 
would. As we sink deeper and deeper into 
this record, we find that the birds differ more 
and more from the present types ; that a 
greater number of flightless onfes are discovered, 
this disability constituting one of the factors, 
and an important one, in their extirpation ; that 
as we continue our research in this mutilated 
record, with its many missing pages, we fall into 
the cretaceous beds. Ah! what a lapse of time, 
and how vast the change; we have to refer 
but to the record of Hesperornis to appreciate 
this — teeth, a questionable covering of feath- 
ers, and a keelless sternum. Another leap into 
the depths of time, when we find the Archaop- 
teryx, whose organization must indeed have 
been a lowly one. It seems, too, the further we 
go back into geologic times, the less special- 
ized do bird forms become, and the nearer they 
approach the reptilian types. Although ex- 
tinct feathered forms can teach us little more, 
we may be happy in the thought that so im- 
mutable is the primeval code of laws, that 
they have never ceased to operate in the 
same manner now as they did in the begin- 
ning; and as with all beings, so has it been 
from the reptile of mythical Eden to the snow- 
white dove of our day, the tendency is ever 
onward and upward in the line of improve- 
ment. 
R. TV. Shufeldt. 
LOVE THAT LIVES. 
D EAR face — bright, glinting hair — 
Dear life, whose heart is mine — 
The thought of you is prayer, 
The love of you divine. 
In starlight, or in rain ; 
In the sunset’s shrouded glow ; 
Ever, with joy or pain, 
To you my quick thoughts go 
Like winds or clouds, that fleet 
Across the hungry space 
Between, and find you, sweet, 
Where life again wins grace. 
Now, as in that once young 
Year that so softly drew 
My heart to where it clung, 
I long for, gladden in you. 
And when in the silent hours 
I whisper your sacred name, 
Like an altar-fire it showers 
My blood with fragrant flame! 
Perished is all that grieves; 
And lo, our old-new joys 
Are gathered as in sheaves, 
Held in love’s equipoise. 
Ours is the love that lives; 
Its spring-time blossoms blow 
’Mid the fruit that autumn gives; 
And its life outlasts the snow. 
George Parsons Lathrop. 
