that connect the Orders and Families of Birds. 415 
To these birds we shall hereafter observe them united by inter- 
mediate genera, which partake in a lesser degree of the character 
of the palmated foot. In fact, the webbed feet of the Flamingo 
and Avocet appear to me to connect them with the Natatores 
by a relation of analogy rather than of affinity. These birds 
are the extremes of the groups to which they belong. Both 
deviate from the habits of their own tribes, by gaining their sus- 
tenance on the sea-shore or at the mouths of great rivers, and 
thus become more pelagic in their manners than their conge- 
ners. Itis not, consequently, to be wondered at, that they should 
assume a conformation in a subordinate degree analogous to that 
of the true oceanic birds, to whose sphere of life they approach. 
These two groups being on the whole so widely different in their 
chief characters, it is not among them that we may expect to find 
the passage between the two aquatic orders. We shall perceive 
it more strongly indicated by the lobate-footed Fulica, which 
recedes from the Grallatores and approaches the Natatores, not 
only by the rudiments of the web that partially fringes the toes, 
but by its habits of swimming. I cannot, however, agree with 
the views of those writers, who place this genus among the true 
Natatores, and form it into a subdivision of that order in con- 
junction with the genera PAalaropus and Podiceps: much less 
can I accord with that disposition which places these three 
groups, so dissimilar in manners, and even in the construc- 
tion of the foot*, in a separate order of their own. Fulica, in a 
; natural 
* [ know no two birds in which the construction of the foot, and the use to which it is 
applied, is more dissimilar than in Fulica and Podiceps, although they certainly belong 
to approaching groups. Fulica has the true ambulatorial foot of the Grallatores, with 
the rudiments of a web that exhibit a partial deviation from that order and an approach 
to the swimming powers of the Natatores. Podiceps has a true natatorial foot, and 
one in which the powers of swimming and diving are strongly developed, as will appear 
in the course of the succeeding observations, The hind toes of both these genera are 
totally unlike: while the different position of their legs evince the extreme distance 
between their respective stations among the birds that swim ; one group belonging to 
the 
