Excerpt from Classification of Birds: An Attempt to Diagnose the Subclasses, Orders, Suborders, and Some of the Families of Existing Birds It must be remembered that, so far as the individual is concerned, every bird inherited all its characters, whether they may be adapted to its present needs or not, but that all characters were originally acquired either by the species or its ancestors because they were originally adapted to its needs. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.