BIRDS. The earliest known birds are found in the Jurassic, and during the remainder of the Mesozoic they contended with the flying reptiles for the empire of the air. The first feathered creatures were very different from the birds of to-day. Their characteristics prove them an offshoot of the dinosaur line of reptiles. ARCHAEOPTERYX (ANCIENT BIRD) (Fig. 338) exhibits a strange mingling of bird and reptile. Like birds, it was fledged with perfect feathers, at least on wings and tail, but it retained the teeth of the reptile, and its long tail was vertebrated, a pair of feathers springing from each joint. Throughout the Jurassic and Cretaceous the remains of birds are far less common than those of flying reptiles, and strata representing hundreds of thousands of years intervene between Archaeopteryx and the next birds of which we know, whose skeletons occur in the Cretaceous beds of western Kansas. MAMMALS. So far as the entries upon the geological record show, mammals made their advent in a very humble way during the Trias. These earliest of vertebrates which suckle their young were no bigger than young kittens, and their strong affinities with the theromorphs suggest that their ancestors are to be found among some generalized types of that order of reptiles. During the long ages of the Mesozoic, mammals continued small and few, and were completely dominated by the reptiles. Their remains are exceedingly rare, and consist of minute scattered teeth,--with an occasional detached jaw,--which prove them to have been flesh or insect eaters. In the same way their affinities are seen to be with the lowest of mammals,--the MONOTREMES and MARSUPIALS. The monotremes,--such as the duckbill mole and the spiny ant-eater of Australia, reproduce by means of eggs resembling those of reptiles; the marsupials, such as the opossum and the kangaroo, bring forth their young alive, but in a very immature condition, and carry them for some time after birth in the marsupium, a pouch on the ventral side of the body. CHAPTER XXI THE TERTIARY THE CENOZOIC ERA. The last stages of the Cretaceous are marked by a decadence of the reptiles. By the end of that period the reptilian forms characteristic of the time had become extinct one after another, leaving to represent the class only the types of reptiles which continue to modern times. The day of the ammonite and the belemnite also now drew to a close, and only a few of these cephalopods were left to survive the period. It is therefore at the close of the Cretaceous that the line is drawn which marks the end of the Middle Age of geology and the beginning of the Cenozoic era, the era of modern life,--the Age of Mammals.