that connect the Orders and Families of Birds. 399 



system by which all are united, and the harmony that prevails 

 throughout. 



The system which has been traced out with so much success 

 by the author of Hone Entomologicce in various groups of the 

 animal kingdom, prevails in none more conspicuously than in 

 those of ornithology. Having lately devoted considerable atten- 

 tion to that captivating branch of science, I discovered as I ad- 

 vanced, that the larger or primary groups into which it arranged 

 itself were connected together by an uninterrupted chain of 

 affinities ; that this series or chain returned into itself ; and that 

 the groups of which it was composed preserved in their regular 

 succession an analogy to the corresponding groups or orders of 

 the contiguous classes of zoology. I equally detected the exist- 

 ence of the same principle in most of the subordinate subdivi- 

 sions, even down to the minutest, to a degree at least sufficiently 

 extensive to afford grounds for asserting its general prevalence. 

 With the permission of this Society, I shall lay before them, as 

 their leisure will permit, some of the results of these inquiries : 

 and, in the present paper, shall trace out the outline of that 

 general arrangement which appears to me to prevail throughout 

 the feathered tribes. In this attempt, however, I must premise, 

 that I aim at no innovations in science, no opposition to the 

 views of those distinguished naturalists who have preceded me 

 on this subject. I wish to found my deductions alone on the 

 facts which they have brought together, and the principles which 

 they have established ; making those more particularly my 

 guides, who have paid the closest attention to the natural affini- 

 ties of the objects they have classed. The materials upon which 

 I work are selected from the labours of those who are most com- 

 petent to decide on the subject. All that is new is the mode in 

 which these materials are combined. 



I must equally premise, what indeed it is almost superfluous 



to 



