Rensselaer Union, Volume 6, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 June 1874 — The Growth of a Feather. [ARTICLE]

The Growth of a Feather.

In the skin of a bird where a new feather is to grow there is a little pit, and at the bottom of this an elevation or pyramid; extending up one side of this pyramid is a groove, or furrow, deepest at the base, and gradually growing shallower until it disappears near the top; from each side of this furrow a great many smaller grooves extend around to the other side of the pyramid, and these also decrease in depth, and at last disappear just as they are about to meet on the side opposite the large furrow. The whole pyramid is covered with skin, and the surface is made of the same scales, or flattened cells, that are found over the rest of the body; but, instead of falling off when they are pushed out bv the new ones below them, they become united or welded to each other, so as to form a horn coat over the surface of the pyramid, with ridges on its lower or inner surface corresponding to the grooves on the pyramid; and, as new cells grow at the base, this coat or cast *f the surface is pushed upward till it breaks at its thinnest part, which ip, of course, the smooth part without ridges opposite the large furrow; and then, as* it is pushed onward and flattened, it assumes the form of a feather, the ridge formed in the main furrow being the shaft, while the casts of the side grooves form the separate barbs of the vane. When all of the vane has been formed and pushed forward, the pyramid loses its grooves and becomes smooth, and the wall now formed on its surface, being of the same thickness in all parts, does not break, but remains tubular, and forms the quill, which is attached to what is left of the pyramid. A finger-nail or a hair is formed from the same kind of scales; in the same way, the process diflering only in those features which give to each organ its special character. Feathers, scales, hair, claws and nails, all arernade alike from the dead, flattened cells crowded to the surface by the process of growth. Popular Science Monthly. t The Haywood (Gal.) Advocate tells of an English sportsman who was up that way the other day with the inevitable game-bag, eye-glasses and cloth shoes, (Who, after assassinating helpless buzifards which he found asleep on a fence, returned to town and reported that he had shot a “heagle” and had been pursued by wolves. The wolves were harmless coyotes,, which , after their habit, had been trotting after the terrified hunter, in the hope that he would drop something for them to eat —Texas promises us a larger harvest of gram this season than the has yielded for