410 Mr. N. A. Vigors on the Natural Affinities 



with the outer, but divided from the inner. Again, as I have 

 already remarked, Capr-imulgus has the nail of the middle toe 

 dilated and serrated : Striv 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 Columbidce, 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 Linnaeus 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 Gallinaceous 

 Birds. 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 ihe Caprimulgi. — Nov. 1824. 



f " Comme les premiers (les GaUinacis) ils ont le bee voute, les narines percees dans 

 un large espace membraneux et couvertes d'une 6caille cartilagineuse qui forme meme 

 un renfiement k la base du bee ; le sternum osseux profondement et doublement 6chan- 

 cre, quoique dans une disposition un peu differente, le jabot extr^mement dilate, le 

 larynx inf^rieur muni d'un seul muscle propre." Cuvier, Regne Anim. i. p. 454. 



the 



