Identifier: birditsformfunct00beebuoft (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 : Holt
Contributing Library: Gerstein - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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sh as possible from the skeleton and deposit the bones in a pail of water. In a few days they can be washed white and clean. Perhaps the easiest way of all is to save what bones you can of a boiled chicken. These are of large size and will show us all we wish to know. The framework of a bird consists of a long jointed string of bones called vertebrae, with the brain-box or skull at one end and a blunt tail at the other. Near the middle, the outcurving ribs extend around the organs of the body, and, with the breast-bone, form an encircling protective sheath. Two short series of bones project in front of the ribs—the bones of the wings,—and two more behind the ribs—those of the legs and feet; while at the point of attachment of each of these four limbs there radiates a trio of bones. The back-bone is the fundamental and oldest part of the skeleton, and though we cannot follow its evolution directly backward through the long ages, yet there is sufficient gradation among living creatures to give us
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Fig. 41.—Common Fowl, showing relation of the bony framework or skeleton to the contour of the body. Notice large eye, long and mobile neck, the knee wholly within the body plumage, and the well-developed keel hinting of ancestors with strong powers of flight. 1/4 natural size. 6? 66 The Bird hints of the way it originated. In the lowest of fish-like creatures—the Amphioxus, a tiny animal, an inch or two in length, living in the sand along, our shores—there is a thread-like cord of a gelatinous substance (not cartilage, however) extending down the back, known as the notochord. He looks like some kind of worm, but this little gristle is his badge of nobility and lifts him clear

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