that connect the Orders and Families of Birds. 309 
system by which all are united, and the harmony that prevails 
throughout. 
The system which has been traced out with so much success 
by the author of Hore Entomologice in various groups of the 
animal kingdom, prevails in none more conspicuously than in 
those of ornithology. Having lately devoted considerable atten- 
tion to that captivating branch of science, I discovered as I ad- 
vanced, that the larger or primary groups into which it arranged 
itself were connected together by an uninterrupted chain of 
affinities ; that this series or chain returned into itself ; and that 
the groups of which it was composed preserved in their regular 
succession an analogy to the corresponding groups or orders of 
the contiguous classes of zoology. I equally detected the exist- 
ence of the same principle in most of the subordinate subdivi- 
sions, even down to the minutest, to a degree at least sufficiently 
extensive to afford grounds for asserting its general prevalence. 
With the permission of this Society, I shalllay before them, as 
their leisure will permit, some of the results of these inquiries : 
and, in the present paper, shall trace out the outline of that 
general arrangement which appears to me to prevail throughout 
the feathered tribes. In this attempt, however, I must premise, 
that I aim at no innovations in science, no opposition to the 
views of those distinguished naturalists who have preceded me 
on this subject. I wish to found my deductions alone on the 
facts which they have brought together, and the principles which 
théy. have established; making those more particularly my 
guides, who have paid the closest attention to the natural affini- 
ties of the objects they have classed. "Phe materials upon which 
I work are selected from the labours of those who are most com- 
petent to decide on the subject. All that is new is the mode in 
which these materials are combined. 
I must equally premise, what indeed it is almost superfluous 
to 
