File:The study of animal life (1906) (14585941407).jpg

Identifier: studyofanimallif00thomuoft (find matches)
Title: The study of animal life
Year: 1906 (1900s)
Authors: Thomson, J. Arthur (John Arthur), 1861-1933
Subjects: Zoology
Publisher: New York : C. Scribner's sons
Contributing Library: Gerstein - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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he penguins, criminals too like the cuckoos and cow-birds inwhich the maternal instincts are strangely perverted. As we goback into the past, strange forms are discovered, with teeth, longtails, and other characteristics which link the birds of the air to thegrovelling reptiles of the earth. Even to-day there lives areptilian-bird—Opisthocomtis—which has retained more thanany other indisputable affinities with the reptiles. Professor W. K.Parker, one of the profoundest of all students of birds, describedthis form in one of his last papers, and there used a comparisonwhich helps us to appreciate birds. They are among backbonedanimals what insects are among the backboneless—winged pos-sessors of the air, and just as many insects pass through a cater-pillar and chrysalis stage before reaching the acme of their life as aflying imago, so do the young birds within the veil of the egg-shell pass through somewhat fish-like and somewhat reptile-like 266 TJie Study of Animal Life part iii
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Fig. 56.—Decorative male anil less adorned female of Spathura—a genus otHumming-birds. (From Darwin, after Brehm.) CHAP. XVI Backboned Animals 267 stages before they attain to the possession of wings and the enjoy-ment of freedom. The great majority of birds are fliers, and possess a keeleilbreast-bone, to which are fixed the muscles used in flight. Tothis keel or carina they owe their name Carinatne. The flyinghost includes the gullj and grebes, the plovers and cranes, theducks and geese, the storks and herons, the pelicans and cormo-rants, the partridges and pheasants, the sand grouse, the pigeons,the birds of prey, the parrots, the pies, and about 6000 Passerine orsparrow-like birds, including thrushes and warblers, wrens andswallows, finches and crows, starlings and birds of paradise. Tothese orders we have to adil Opis/hofo/i/iis, from which it is perhapseasier to pass to some of the keeled fossil birds, some of whichpossessed teeth. Distinct from the keeled fliers, both anci

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