Bird
Bird names 3 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Bird the English designation of the aves
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.
Bird a feathered animal
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a feathered animal. Scientists put much more into the description of a bird, as air-breathing; having a backbone; warm-blooded; two pairs of limbs, the front pair of wings used for flying or swimming, the hind pair, legs used for walking or swimming; reproducing by hard-shelled eggs, hatched externally; but, after all, the proverb holds true that "a bird is known by its feathers." All birds have feathers. No other animal has feathers. At first thought, flying might be considered a characteristic of birds, but bats fly, and some birds, as the auk, penguin, and ostrich, do not fly. In the scale of animal creation, birds are lower than mammals and higher than reptiles. A study of fossil birds, of which some five hundred species are known, leads to the conclusion that birds have been developed from reptiles. The earlier birds seem to have been flying reptiles, with teeth, long tails, and scaly feathers. Living birds may be classified conveniently as follows: I. Perching birds--thrush, kinglet, nuthatch, tree-creeper, dipper, wren, wagtail, warbler, vireo, shrike, waxwing, swallow, tanager, finch, blackbird, crow, horned lark, and flycatcher. II. Goatsuckers, nighthawks, swifts, and hummingbirds. III. Parrots and macaws. IV. Woodpeckers. V. Cuckoos and kingfishers. VI. Birds of prey--eagle, owl, vulture, condor, and hawk. VII. Pigeons and doves. VIII. Scratching-birds--quail, grouse, turkey. IX. Shore-birds--plover, woodcock, snipe. X. Cranes and rails. XI. Herons and egrets. XII. Flamingoes. XIII. Swimmers with comb-edge bills--duck, goose, swan. XIV. Fully webbed swimmers--pelican, darter, cormorant. XV. Tube-nosed swimmers--albatross. XVI. Long-winged swimmers--gull, and tern. XVII. Diving birds--loon, grebe, auk, murre. XVIII. Flightless divers--penguin. XIX. Flightless runners--ostrich, cassowary. Birds are natural travelers. The great majority of birds change their place of residence with the season. In the spring they travel from the warmer regions toward the poles to nest and return to tropical and sub-tropical climates to winter. See Ornithology ; Nests; Audubon ; Archaeopterix; also articles on the different birds mentioned in the table above.
Bird CHARLES, an American military officer
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
CHARLES, an American military officer, born in Delaware, June 17, 1838. He entered the volunteer service in 1861, as First Lieutenant, 1st Delaware Infantry; was promoted Lieutenant-Colonel, 9th Delaware Infantry, in 1864; and was commissioned Colonel of the 1st United States Veteran Infantry, Dec. 24, 1865. On March 2, 1867, he was brevetted First Lieutenant and Captain in the United States army for gallantry in the battle of Fredericksburg, Major for Spottsylvania, and Lieutenant-Colonel for Petersburg, Va. He was appointed a Second Lieutenant, 14th United States Infantry, in 1866; promoted to Major and Quartermaster in 1895; and commissioned a Colonel of United States Volunteers for the war with Spain, in 1898. He became Brigadier-General in the regular army in 1902, and retired in this year.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's placed birds in 1921 "between the mammalia above, and the reptilia below," and Aiton's in 1910 said only that fossils "lead to the conclusion that birds have been developed from reptiles" — a cautious hedge that has since hardened into something much more specific. Birds are now classified as living dinosaurs, the surviving branch of the theropods, a case revived by John Ostrom's work on Deinonychus in the 1960s and 70s and settled by the feathered dinosaur fossils that began pouring out of Liaoning, China, in the 1990s. Huxley's division into Saururae, Ratitae and Carinatae has been abandoned for a split between palaeognaths (ostrich and kin) and neognaths, and around a dozen Archaeopteryx specimens are now known rather than the three Collier's counted. The other great change is in numbers: some 11,000 living species are recognised, and North America alone is estimated to have lost close to three billion individual birds since 1970.
Written for this edition, 2026.