The Delaware ledger. (Newark, Del.) 1879-19??, 1884-03-29

The most apparently distinctive fea
ture of birds lies in the fact that the,
fly. 1t is this that gives them theil
feathers, their wings and their peculiar
bony structure, And yet, truism a.
such statement sounds, there are {
great many birds that do not hy-ano
it is among these terrestrial or swimming
kinds that we must look for the nearest
bird type. From the very beginning,
birds had to endure the fierce competi-
ton OF the mammals, which had been
developed at slightly earlier period;
and they have for the most part taken
almost entirely to the air, where alone
they possess distinct superiority over
their mammalian compeers. There are
certain spots, however, where mammals
have been unable to penetrate, as in
oceanic islands; and there are certain
other spots which were insulated for a
long period from the great continents,
so that they possessed none of the
higher classes of mammals, as in the
case OF Australia, South America, New
Zealand and South Africa. In these
districts terrestrial birds had chance
which they had not in the great cir
cumpolar land tract, now divided into
two portions, North America on the
west, and Asia and Europe on the east.
1t is in Australia and the southern ex-
tremities of America and Africa, there
fore, that we must LOOK for the most
antiquated forms of birds still SURVIVING
in the world at the present day. The
decadent and now almost extinct order
of OF fhfnnp lNfrHo 10 xtyl,fnh 5ab
and cassowaries belong, supplies us
with the best examples OF such antique
forms. These birds are all distinguished
from every other known species, except
the transitional Solenhofen creature and
a few other old types, by the fact that
they have no keel to the fiat breast
bone, popularity which at once marks
them out as not adapted for fight.
Every one whose anatomical studies
have been carried ON as far as the carv-
ing of chicken or q pheasant for din
ner knows that the two halves of the
breast are divided by a sharp keel or
edge protrudIng from the breast-bone,
but in the ostrich and their allies such
keel Is wanting and the breast bone Is
rounded and blunt. At one time these
lat-chested birds were widely distrib-
uted over the whole world, for they are
found in fossil forms from China to
Peru, but as the mammalian race in
creased and multiplied and replenished
the earth, only the best adapted keeled |
birds were able to hold their own |
against these four-legged competitors in
the great continents. Thus thegigantic
ostriches OF the Isle of Sheppey and |
the great divers OF the Western States |
died slowly out, leaving all their mod
ern kindred to inhabit the less progress
sive southern hemisphere alone. Even |
there, the monstrous @pyernis, huge,
stalking wIngIess bird, disappeared |
from Madagascar in the tertiary age,
while the great moa of New Zealand,
after living down to almost historical
times, fell a victim at last to that very |
aggressive and hungry mammal, the |
Maori himself. This almost reduces the |
existing struthious types to three small
and scattered colonies, in Australasia,
South Africa and South America re-
spectively, though there are still prob
ably few ostriches left in some remote
parts of the Asiatic continent.