BIRDS AND FEATHERS 
CHAPTER VI 
Birds 
HE most uninitiated can recognize without the 
faintest difficulty the characters that distinguish 
birds from other animals. But it must not be assumed 
at once that to define them as feathered bipeds is quite 
enough. For, to begin with, birds are scaly as well as 
feathered, thus showing a glimpse, externally visible, of 
their unquestioned relationship to the lower lying 
reptiles. The feet are always scaly, in parts at least, 
and generally entirely so. Anyhow, no creature that 
is not a bird has feathers or even anything at all 
approaching to feathers, in nature; and per contra, no 
bird is without feathers. More than this, all birds 
possess wings, even the wrongly called Apteryx, which 
has tiny wings concealed beneath its feathers. The 
term wing here, it will be observed, does not necessarily 
mean an organ of flight. Though all birds possess 
wings, all birds cannot fly. Besides the Apteryx, the 
ostrich tribe generally are purely cursorial, and so are 
certain rails and one or two other birds. What is meant 
by wing in this sense is a fore limb, actually and accur- 
ately comparable to the arm ofman or the fore legs of 
a cat, in which the number of fingers is reduced from 
five to three, and the proportions of the remaining 
bones is somewhat altered from what is found in reptiles 
and mammals. This being the case, all birds are bipedal, 
which is another distinguishing character, though it is 
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