56 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. 



SUPER-ORDER II. IMPENNES. 



This group, which, for reasons given further on, we here propose to treat as a 

 superorder equivalent to the Dromseognathae (ostriches, etc.) and Etiornithes (including 

 the rest of the living birds), has suffered a curious fate under the hands of ornitholo- 

 gists. Although one of the most distinct and peculiar divisions within the homo- 

 geneous bird-class, its position among the other groups has, until lately, been a very 

 subordinate one. 



Linnaeus did not even recognize the penguins as a separate genus. He placed one of 

 these fin-winged species together with the swift-flying sun-birds, or tropic-birds, while 

 another was ranked with the albatross. Brisson, the great contemporaneous ornithol- 

 ogist, however, made both those species types of separate genera, the latter of the 

 genus Spheniscus, the former he called Catarractes. They were shortly after com- 

 bined, by Forstcr and Gmelin, with other species into the genus Aptenodytes. 

 The efforts of Cuvier and the ornithologists of his age resulted in the cutting up of 

 Linnseus's 'families,' --as his 'ordines' were styled at that time, into several 

 orders, the Natatores, among which the penguins had been placed, being divided in 

 Pinnipedes (Steganopodes), Macropteres (Longipennes), Serrirostres (Lamellirostres) 

 and Brachyptercs (Pygopodes), and among the latter Avere placed the divers, auks, 

 and penguins as genera of equal rank. A decided progress was made by Illiger in 

 1811, who divided the 'order' Natatores in six families, the last being the Impennes, 

 which only included the genus Aptenodytes. But when Vigors in 1825 established the 

 families ending in idee, the penguins were again included among the ' Alcidae.' 

 Bonaparte, soon after (1831), made them the types of the family Spheniscidae, a posi- 

 tion they held for nearly forty years without any serious challenge, as even Huxley 

 failed to recognize their true position, assigning them, as he did, a place as a 

 ' family ' of equal taxonomic value with the plovers, cranes, gulls, etc. G. R. Gray 

 had placed the penguins between the auks and the guillemots, consequently between 

 two groups the typical species of which (the razor-billed auk, and the common guil- 

 lemot), by many prominent ornithologists of the present day, are regarded as not 

 even generically distinct; but it was not before he (in 1871) repeated this master- 

 piece of systematical perversity, that it became evident to all that the true relation- 

 ship of these remarkable birds had been grossly misunderstood. Nevertheless, the 

 rank of ' order ' was all that could be afforded at the time, and it is not until very 

 recently that it has been set clearly forth that the penguins, notwithstanding the keel 

 on tlieir breast-bone, are as remote from the other Carinatae (birds with keeled sternum) 

 as these are from the ostriches, if not more so. 



"We have discussed this point at some length because of the interesting parallelism 

 it presents with the fate of the Struthious birds, which at times also have been treated 

 as a genus merely under different families, or orders even (Cursores; Otididse), until 

 the truth of their distinctness was recently acknowledged. The assertion of Profes- 

 sor Huxley, that the extinct great auk (Plant us impennis) " shows itself to be an 

 almost intermediate form " between the penguins and the auks, for a short while pre- 

 vented the full recognition of the broad gap between the former and the rest of the 

 living birds, but recent investigations show quite an opposite result. 



In 1883 Professor Watson, in the seventh volume of the Report on the Results of 

 the Challenger Expedition, presented an excellent " Report on the Anatomy of the 



