Bird (English designation)

Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)

the English designation of the aves, the second class of the sub-kingdom' vert vertebrata, standing between the mammalia (mammals) above, and the reptilia (reptiles) below. While in their warm blood they are more closely akin to the former than to the latter, they approach the latter rather than the former in various points of anatomical structure, especially in their lower limbs. They agree also with reptiles, amphibia and fishes in being oviparous, while the mammalia bring forth their young alive and suckle them for a time. Birds are feathered bipeds, with wings, used by all but a few aberrant species, for flight. To facilitate this air cells communicating with the lungs permeate the larger bones, and even the huge bills of the hornbill, toucan, etc., the effect being greatly to diminish their weight. The circulation is rapid, the blood warmer than in other vertebrates, and the energy, consequently, great. Huxley, in 1864, separated birds into saurururæ, containing only the archæopteryx; the ratitæ, including the ostrich and its allies; and the carinatæ, comprehending all ordinary birds. The oldest bird of which the actual feathered skeleton has been obtained comes from the lithographic slate of Upper Oölitic age, quarried at Solenhofen in Bavaria; it is the archæopteryx of Owen. Three specimens of it are known at present: one in Bavaria, the second in South Kensington, London, while the third was sold to the Berlin University Museum, by Herr Haberlein for 80,000 000 marks. This last specimen of archæopteryx has been examined by Prof. Carl Vogt, who considers that it is neither bird nor reptile, but something intermediate between the two. Owen, in 1846, established four species from the London Clay, described from four or five fragments of bones and skulls found in that Eocene deposit. These include a vulture, a kingfisher, and an ostrich. Bones of birds have been met with somewhat plentifully in the Paris gypsum and the Lacustrine Limestone of the Limagne d'Auvergne, both fresh water strata of Eocene age. From the Miocene beds of France have been obtained about 70 species, among other parrots, trogons, flamingoes, secretary birds, and marabout storks, suggesting the present fauna of south Africa. There are birds in the Miocene of the Sewalik Hills in India. Of Post-tertiary species the finest, and also the best known, are the gigantic moas from New Zealand, which seem to have been contemporary with man, though now they are extinct. The yet more massive æpiornis, the eggs of which are more than 13 inches in diameter, and equal in capacity to 148 hen's eggs, is found in surface deposits in Madagascar. Thus few fossil birds are known, and those few are mostly the Tertiary or Post-tertiary rocks. from In heraldry, birds are regarded, some as emblems of the more active, and others of the contemplative, life. Among the terms applied to them are membered, armed and close. When birds are mentioned in blazon, without expressing their species, they should be drawn in the form of the blackbird. See also BOB-O-LINK; CANARY BIRD.