How is it done? How does the _Shamrock_ sail? Watch, and you will see.
When the wind is behind, each stiff quill at the end of the wing stands
out by itself and is caught and driven by the blast; but as the bird
turns round to face the gale, they all close up and form a continuous
mainsail, close-hauled. And all the while the expanded tail is in play,
dipping first at one side and then at the other, and turning the trim
craft with easy grace "as the governor listeth."

[Illustration: THERE ARE SOME ECCENTRICS, SUCH AS JENNY WREN, WHICH HAVE
DESPISED THEIR TAILS.]

Besides ground birds, like the quail, there are some eccentrics, such as
Jenny wren, which have despised their tails, and there are specialists
also which require them for other purposes than flying. The woodpecker's
tail is quite useless as a rudder, for he is a woodman and has altered
and adapted it for a portable stool to rest against as he plies his axe.

But that man must be very blind to the place which birds have taken in
the progress of civilisation who can suppose it possible that they
should think only of utility in such a question as the disposal of their
tails. It is a common notion among those who have acquired some
smattering of the theory of evolution that fishes developed into
reptiles, reptiles into birds, and birds into beasts; but this is as
wrong as it could be. Whatever the genealogy of the beasts may be, they
certainly were not evolved from birds, and are in many respects not
above them but below them. These are two independent branches of the
tree of living forms, as the Greeks and Romans were branches of the
stock of Japheth. The beasts may stand for the conquering Romans if you
like, but the birds are the Greeks, and have advanced far beyond them in
all emotional and artistic sensibility. They worship in the temple of