File:The bird, its form and function (1906) (14752524841).jpg

Identifier: birditsformfuncti00beeb (find matches)
Title: The bird, its form and function
Year: 1906 (1900s)
Authors: Beebe, William, 1877-1962
Subjects: Birds -- Anatomy Birds -- Physiology
Publisher: New York, H. Holt and company
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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alter the style ofarchitecture of a house, we need only to change the ex-terior, columns, arches and windows, while the stonefoundation and brick walls may remain as they are. Soin fashioning new forms of life. Nature has often alteredthe covering, and even the muscles and organs, of ani-mals to such an extent that we would have little clewas to the relations of these creatures, were it not for theunderlying bones, which are so deeply seated that theyreact less slowly to changes in the outside life. If a fish,a lizard, a bird, a whale, and a man should be presentedto us for classification, we might well hesitate until wehad seen their bones, when there would flash upon usthe same moulded type running through all. The study of the skeleton, or Osteology, is like allother ologies; it can be made as dry as the bones them-selves; or the very opposite, by leaving the minor detailsand less important particulars to text-books, choosing only the most significant facts. One may smile at the 62
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Fig. 40.—X-ray photograph of the front view of a homing Pigeon, showing thebones clearly through the surrounding flesh. Observe the light, spongycharacter of the skull and the bones of the limbs, the latter appearing almosthollow. The crop filled with corn is visible spread out at the base of theneck, and low down in the body, near the right thigh, the grit and pebbleswithin the gizzard are very distinct. About the tarsus of the right leg isseen the metal tag which was used for the identification of the living bird.(Photographed by Dr. Henry G. Piffard.) 63 64 The Bird thought of bestowing an encomium on a jaw-bone, and3et the history of the lower part of a sparrows beakopens a vista so far-reaching that the mind of man faUersat the thought; it shows the last roll of an evolvingwhich, could we follow it back, would merge the man, thewhale, the bird, the lizard, the fish, into one. Let us look at some of the bones of a sparrow ordove or chicken. One way to do this is to place a deadb

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