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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past! It is to be hoped thatmany more fossils may be discovered, for the hints givenus in the anatomy of birds, and the glimpses of past his-tory which flash out from the development of the chickwithin the egg,—all this evidence is becoming ever moreand more clouded and illegible. Having learned that birds are descended from a rep-tile-like ancestor, it is interesting to search among livingreptiles for the one which most resembles birds, and wehave no choice but to select the alligator—cold-blooded,scaly, bound to the earth though he is. A second nearrelation is to be found in the group of long-extinct Dino-saurs. A complete record of past ages would show theancestral stems of alligators, Dinosaurs, and birds grad-ually approaching each other until somewhere, at sometime, they were united in a common stock. But wemust guard against the notion that birds are descendedfrom any group of living reptiles; which is as fallaciousan idea as that we Americans trace our direct descent from
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9 lo The Bird the Chinese, or that mankind is descended from the chim-panzee or gorilla. For the purpose of making more clear and interestingthe ways in which birds have become especially adaptedto their surroundings and needs, we may consider Archce-opteryx as resembling closely the tjpical original bird-tNpe from which all others have at least indirect!) evolved;and thus having obtained a definitely fixed starting-point,we may consider how some of the more representativebirds of the present dav came to acquire their widelydiffering structure and characteristics.* The tree of evolution of reptiles ma) be compared toa growth where several great trunks spring from theground close together, towering up separately but equallyhigh; the topmost twigs of which are represented by theliving species of serpents, turtles, lizards, and crocodilesrespectively. A very different arboreal structure is pre-sented in the genealogical tree of the Class of birds. Here,from a short trunk, we have many ra

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