400 Mr. N. À. Vicors on the Natural Affinities 
to observe, that any attempt to exhibit the natural distribution 
of the groups of ornithology must necessarily, in the present 
state of our knowledge, be in a great degree defective. Exten- 
sive as have been our acquisitions of late years, our knowledge 
of this department of animal life may still be said to be in its 
infancy. Were I to assert that we have now attained a satis- 
factory view of Nature, so far as to enable us to pourtray a com- 
plete and finished arrangement of her works, the new forms that 
are every day pouring in upon us, the very exhibition* at the last 
meeting of the Society, collected in a hitherto unexplored region 
by the zeal of one of its most valued members, and placed at 
its disposal by his liberality, would sufficiently prove me in 
error. But it is not alone in the knowledge of forms that we 
are deficient, but in that of the habits, economy, and internal 
anatomy of many species, nay, entire families, with whose forms 
we are already conversant. Collectors of natural history are not 
always men of science ; nor have scientific men, even when they 
become collectors, at all times the leisure or the opportunity of 
making those minute observations that may determine the natu- 
ral affinities of the objects that come in their way. "This is a 
deficiency that most frequently baffles the systematic ornitholo- 
gist, who for the most part has but the external covering of a 
bird to assist him in ascertaining its place in nature. The bill 
and legs may indeed decide the more extensive subdivision or 
order under which it arranges itself; but its affinity to any of 
the subordinate groups can be pronounced with no certainty, 
until its internal structure and general economy be ascertained. 
Hence it arises that some chasms will occasionally occur in the 
following attempt at a natural arrangement ; and many minute 
* The exhibition alluded to is the very valuable collection of birds formed by 
General Hardwicke in Nepaul, and most liberally presented by him to the Linnean 
Society. 
groups 
