“Of course it isn’t,” said Dodo; “it hasn’t any feathers on its beak or on its feet, else how could it eat and hop about?”

“That is right.  These parts of a Sparrow are bare; they never have any feathers; and the skin on them is hard and horny, as different from soft thin skin as finger-nails.  Now look at the beak, and think how many things a Sparrow has to do with it.  He has no hands or paws, and so he must pick up everything he eats with his beak.  He has no teeth, and so he must bite his food with his beak.  He feeds on seeds like a Canary bird; so his beak comes to a sharp point, because seeds are small things to pick up; and it is very strong and horny, because seeds are hard to crack, to get at the kernel.  Notice, too, children, that his beak is in two halves, an upper half and a lower half; when these halves are held apart his mouth is open, so that you can see the tongue inside; and when the two halves are closed together the mouth is shut.  These halves are called the upper mandible and the lower mandible.”

“Why, it’s just like people’s mouths,” said Nat, “only people have lips and teeth.”

“Certainly it is like our mouths.  Birds are built like ourselves in a great many things, and live as we do in a great many ways.  Bird People and House People are animals, and all animals must eat to live.  A bird’s beak is its mouth, and the under mandible moves up and down, like our chins when we eat or talk.  Birds can talk as well as sing with their beaks.  This Sparrow can say ‘Peabody,’ and some kinds of Parrots can repeat whole sentences so as to be understood.  That is another thing in which birds’ beaks are like our mouths.  Now look again—­can you see anything else about the Sparrow’s beak?”

“I see a pair of little holes at the root of the upper mandible,” said Rap.

“Well, those are the nostrils!” said the Doctor.  “Birds must breathe, like ourselves, and when the beak is shut they breathe through the nostrils.”

“So do I,” said Dodo; and then she pursed up her pretty red lips tightly, breathing quite hard through her nose.  “I do think,” she said, when she had finished this performance, “birds have faces, with all the things in them that we have—­there are the eyes, too, on each side, like people’s eyes, only they look sideways and not in front.  But I don’t see their ears.  Have birds any ears, Uncle Roy?”

“I can show you this Sparrow’s ears.  See here,” said the Doctor, who had run the point of his penknife under a little package of feathers on one side of the back of the Sparrow’s head, and lifted them up; “what does that look like?”

“It’s a hole in the skin that runs into the head,” said Nat.  “Can birds hear through that?”