Of the several families of smaller and less well-known mammals peculiar to this continent, mention may be made of the pouched rats of California.
All of the animals to which attention has thus far been directed are now living; should one attempt to describe the great number of fossil forms whose bones have been discovered in the rocks, the menagerie would be vastly enlarged, and many exceedingly strange species, genera, families, and even larger divisions of the animal kingdom, added to the extended procession.
THE BIRDS
When one attempts to write an account of the birds of North America, the heavens seem darkened with such a multitude of varied and beautiful forms and the air filled with such a discordant clamour mingled with the sweetest of music that failure to convey an adequate idea of the countless numbers and diversity of the feathered throng within the compass of a few pages must be recognised from the start.
The important place held by the birds of North America in the avifauna of the world, may perhaps be best indicated by noting first of all what orders and families are without representatives among them.
The orders under which the birds of the world are arranged in the scheme of classification adopted by Wallace in his great work on the geographical distribution of animals are as follows:
CLASS—AVES
| Orders. | Examples. |
| 1. Passeres | Includes the greater number of the smaller birds, such as kingbirds, flycatchers, larks, jays, crows, blackbirds, finches, sparrows, warblers, chickadees, swallows, thrushes, etc., numbering in North America some 328 species and many subspecies. |
| 2. Picariæ | Woodpeckers, cuckoos, toucans, kingfishers, swifts, goat-suckers, humming-birds, etc. |
| 3. Psittaci | Parrots only. |
| 4. Columbæ | Pigeons and the dodo. |
| 5. Gallinæ | Grouse, pheasants, quail, jungle-fowl, turkeys, guinea-fowl, etc. |
| 6. Opisthocomi | The hoazin of Guiana and Brazil only. |
| 7. Accipitres | Eagles, owls, vultures, hawks, buzzards, falcons, etc. |
| 8. Grallæ | Rails, snipes, plovers, cranes, herons, storks, flamingoes, etc. |
| 9. Anseres | Ducks, geese, gulls, petrels, pelicans, penguins, loons, auks, etc. |
| 10. Struthiones | Ostrich, rhea, cassowaries, emeus, apteryx. |
Of these ten orders, all but two are abundantly represented in North America. The missing orders include the ostrich-like birds, of which the only species in the New World is the rhea, of the southern portion of South America,