To return to the case of the bird and the reptile, we find that the first bird-like flying creatures, were not birds but reptiles of a bat-like construction; while the first biped creatures, supposed from their footprints to be birds, were not birds but biped reptiles. An enormous space of time separated biped reptiles from real birds. The remains of the earliest birds seem to have been less well circumstanced for preservation than those of other animals, for very few are found; and of the first animal that can really be called a bird, for many years only part of a single specimen, and that lacking nearly all the head and breast-bone, was known. Enough, however, of the specimen remained stamped on the Bavarian slate to show that this had been a feathered flying creature, with two slender legs, and feet suitable for perching upon trees. It was of about the size of a crow, and had a very singular tail. This tail was long and formed of extended vertebræ like the tail of a lizard, and from every joint grew a pair of large quill feathers. Such a tail must have greatly hindered the creature’s flight, and in fact in the many years that passed before the existence of the next birds of which fossil forms remain, a new fashion of tails had come in; the huge court-train had vanished, and birds appeared with the closely crowded vertebræ of the tail, only sufficient to support the tail feathers. But the print on Bavarian slate is not the only fossil of our long-tailed bird of early days. A feather was also found imprinted on stone, and then about 1880, a very complete specimen, showing that the jaws had teeth, and that the bird had claws. “A fearsome fowl, surely!” The bird next found was aquatic, about the size of the nearly extinct penguin, but wingless. In the chalk shale of Kansas, birds of the size of pigeons, with short wings, but especially remarkable for having teeth in the old reptile fashion, have been found. Modern birds have lost their teeth, finding it more convenient to depend upon gizzards for crushing their food! A bird very nearly the size of a swan has been taken from the New Jersey marl. It is only when the first age of the last world-building period opened, that we find a huge bird as large as an ostrich. This bird was not alone as a giant of the race; there seem to have been other species, too bulky to fly, but able to swim, and no doubt capable of running swiftly on land, aided by the rowing motion of their wings. As the ages move on, more birds appear, having affinities with yet existing types. In some, the jaws had bony points and serrated edges, showing that the birds were fish-eaters, aquatic in their habits, and possessed of webbed feet. Birds allied to the gulls and kingfishers were numerous, and shortly after them came specimens of the flamingo tribe; and still we see that the aquatic birds, the birds that had their living from the all-bountiful sea, were most numerous.