410 Mr. N. A. Vicors on the Natural Affinities 
with the outer, but divided from the inner. Again, as I have 
already remarked, Caprimulgus has the nail of the middle toe 
dilated and serrated: Strix has it, generally speaking, undilated 
and entire at the margin: but in Podargus the same part dis- 
plays the singular dilatation of the one, and the marginal inte- 
grity of the other. It is difficult to say to which of these 
groups it comes nearest, until further and more accurate ac- 
counts than we at present possess of its food and economy may 
determine its actual situation. At present * it remains osculant 
between the two families, and may decidedly be pronounced the 
immediate passage from the Birds of Prey to the Perchers. 
The family of Columbide, alternately arranged by systematic 
writers among the Perching and Gallinaceous orders, and not un- 
frequently grouped as a separate order between the two, at once 
indicates where the point of junction exists between them. These 
birds, although we have the high authority of Linnæus for uniting 
them with that division of our Perchers which form his Passeres, 
I do not hesitate in arranging, conformably to the opinion of 
MM. Cuvier and Illiger, as a subdivision of the GALLIN ACEOUS 
. Brros. In those particulars, where they respectively assume 
the character of each order, their affinity with the latter is 
considerably stronger than that which approximates them to the 
former. Their food and habits, their internal economy, and 
the formation of their bills, identifyt them with the Rasores. 
While, on the other hand, the characters which bring them near 
* From the accounts which I have latterly been enabled to obtain from actual ob- 
servers of some of these birds in New Holland, their manners are generally conformable 
to those of the Caprimulgi.—Nov. 1824. 
+ * Comme les premiers (les Gallinacés) ils ont le bec voüté, les narines percées dans 
un large espace membraneux et couvertes d'une écaille cartilagineuse qui forme méme 
un renflement à la base du bec ; le sternum osseux profondement et doublement échan- 
cré, quoique daus une disposition un peu differente, le jabot extrémement dilaté, le 
larynx inférieur muni d'un seul muscle propre." Cuvier, Regne Anim. i. p. 454. 
the 
