LIST OF WOODCUTS,

FROM DESIGNS BY HARRISON WEIR, R. HUTTULA,

AND OTHER EMINENT ARTISTS.

ENGRAVED BY H. N. WOODS AND W. M. R. QUICK.

STRUCTURE OF BIRDS IN RELATION TO THEIR FLIGHT.

Ir may not be out of place here to offer a few remarks on the wonderful mechanism which enables birds to wing their course so rapidly through the air. The feathers are so placed as to overlap each other, like the slates or the tiles on the roof of a house. They are also arranged from the fore-part backwards; by which the animals are enabled the more conveniently to cut their way through the air. Their bones are tubular or hollow, and extremely light compared with those of terrestrial animals. This greatly facilitates their rising from the earth, whilst their heads, being comparatively small, their bills shaped like a wedge, their bodies slender, sharp below, and round above,-all these present a union of conditions, favourable, in every way, to cutting a passage through the aërial element, to which they are considered as more peculiarly to belong. With all these conditions, however, birds could not fly without wings. These, therefore, are the instruments by which they have the power of rapid locomotion, and

23