. Key to North American birds. Containing a concise account of every species of living and fossil bird at present known from the continent north of the Mexican and United States boundary, inclusive of Greenland and lower California, with which are incorporated General ornithology, an outline of the structure and classification of birds, and Field ornithology, a manual of collecting, preparing, and preserving birds . eory simply requires all forms of life to be developed from some ante-cedent form, presumably, and in mostcases certainly, lower in the scale of or-ganization. Thus man and the gor
. Key to North American birds. Containing a concise account of every species of living and fossil bird at present known from the continent north of the Mexican and United States boundary, inclusive of Greenland and lower California, with which are incorporated General ornithology, an outline of the structure and classification of birds, and Field ornithology, a manual of collecting, preparing, and preserving birds . eory simply requires all forms of life to be developed from some ante-cedent form, presumably, and in mostcases certainly, lower in the scale of or-ganization. Thus man and the gorillaare both descendants of some commonprogenitor, more or less unlike either ofthese existing creatures. All Mammalsare similarly the modified descendantsof some more primitive stock, from whichstock sprang also all Smtropsida, n^.edi-ately or immediately ; therefore, a Mam-mal is not a modified Bird, though higherin the scale; and, though a Bird is amodified Reptile, it is not a modificationof any such snake or lizard as now ex-ists. The most bird-like reptiles knownare not the Pterodactyls, or Flying Rep-tiles (Pterosatiria), as might be sup-posed ; but of that remarkable order, theOrnithoscelida, comprising the Dinosau-rians, which present a large series ofmodifications intermediate in structurebetween existing Reptilia and ,and are therefore inferentially in thedirect ancestral Hue of modern Fig. 14.—Oldest known oniitliological treatise, illus-trating also the art of lithography in the Jurassic period,engraved by Archceopteryx lithographica. From the originnlslab in the British Museum ; after A. Newton, Ency. Brit. Geologic Succession of Birds.— Birds have been traced back in geologictime to Cretaceous and Jurassic epochsof the Mesozoic or Mid-Life period of the worlds history. The earliest ornithichnites — thefossils so called because supposed to indicate the presence of Birds by their foot-prints — werediscovered about the year 1835 in the Triassic
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Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectbirdsnorthamerica
