1 898.] NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 493 



i 



anatomy is concerned some of the systems have undoubtedly proved 

 to be of more value than others in the matter of classification. For 

 example, in this particular the study of the skeleton teaches us more 

 than a comparison of the dermal appendages, but the osseous 

 system is by no means all-sufficient to meet the ends of taxonomy 

 as some still seem to believe. With regard to this it is easy to agree 

 with what Professor Alfred Newton has said, when commenting 

 upon the value of the work left us by Nitzsch, for " there can be no 

 part of a bird's organization that by proper study would not help 

 to supply some means of solving the great question of its affinities. 

 This seems to the present writer to be one of the most certain general 

 truths in zoology, and is probably admitted in theory to be so by 

 most zoologists, but their practice is opposed to it ; for, whatever 

 group of animals be studied, it is found that one set or another of 

 characters is the' chief or favorite of the authors consulted — each 

 generally taking a separate set, and that to the exclusion of all 

 others, instead of effecting a combination of all the sets and taking 

 the aggregate." Thus it is, that notwithstanding the relative value 

 of the characters furnished on the part of any particular morpho- 

 logical system, as indicating interexisting affinities, that value is cer- 

 tain to be affected when the facts brought out by a study of another 

 system, as the muscular system, for example, are applied to it. As 

 evident as this is, however, we have not far to seek in order to dis- 

 cover avian classifiers who would be content to base their taxonomic 

 scheme of the class upon some single character of some special 

 system, as, for instance, De Blainville did in using only the body 

 of the sternum for the purpose. Such a practice lands one not very 

 far from the plane arrived at by Pliny in the first century. 



Doctor Alfred Russel Wallace in criticising this memoir of Mr. 

 Blanchard's in The Ibis for the year 1864, says very truly that we 

 should make the greatest errors in classification by following the 

 sternum alone, as " for example, the sterna of the Finches and the 

 Flycatchers are scarcely distinguishable, notwithstanding the great 

 dissimilarity in almost every part of the structure of these birds — 

 their bills, their feet, their plumage, their habits, food, and digestive 

 organs. On the other hand, the sterna of the several genera of the 

 Caprimulgidaa differ from each other more than those of the most 

 distinct families of the restricted Passeres. The Bee-eaters, the Bar- 

 bets, and the Woodpeckers, again, are three very distinct families, 

 which, in a classification founded upon all parts of a bird's organiza- 



