BIRD, the English designation of the eves, the second class of the sub-king dom 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 communicat ing 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 cir culation is rapid, the blood warmer than in other vertebrates, and the energy, consequently, great. Huxley, in 1864, separated birds into saunerurx, contain ing only the archzopteryx; the ratitx, including the ostrich and its allies; and the carinatx, comprehending all ordinary birds. The oldest bird of which the ac tual feathered skeleton has been obtained comes from the lithographic slate of Upper Oolitic age, quarried at Solen hofen in Bavaria; it is the archxopteryx 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 marks. This last specimen of archmopteryx 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 some what plentifully in the Paris gypsum and the Lacustrine Limestone of the Li magne d'Auvergne, both fresh water strata of Eocene age. From the Miocene beds of France have been obtained about 70 species, among other parrots, tro gons, 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 fin est, and also the best known, are thd gigantic moas from New Zealand, which seem to have been contemporary with man, though now they are extinct. The yet more massive mpiornis, the eggs of which are more than 13 inches in di ameter, 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 from the Tertiary or Post-tertiary rocks.
In heraldry, birds are regarded, some as emblems of the more active, and oth ers of the contemplative, life. Among the terms applied to them are mem bered, 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 Boa-o-LiNic ; CANARY BIRD.