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



Having now completed the original design which 1 sketched 

 out for myself at the commencement of this inquiry, I hope I 

 may be allowed to affirm without laying myself open to the 

 charge of presumption, that I have redeemed the pledge which 

 1 offered when I ventured to assert the uniform succession of 

 affinities throughout the various feathered tribes. I feel at least 

 some confidence, that, however my readers may differ from me 

 as to the general views with which, for the sake of convenience, 

 I have arranged my subject, however dissatisfied they may be 

 with the details through which J have pursued it, they will ac- 

 knowledge the two chief points which alone I esteem as of es- 

 sential consequence, — the general prevalence of natural affinities 

 between the orders and between the families of the class, and the 

 circular succession in which, whether we view them in more or 

 less comprehensive departments, they are connected together. 

 One or two chasms have confessedly occurred to interrupt the 

 progression of these affinities, and the continuity of these groups : 

 and a considerable variation has been acknowledged in the 

 strength and intimacy of the affinities themselves. Some affini- 

 ties have been observed to unite the neighbouring groups so in- 

 timately, as scarcely to admit of any intervention beyond that 

 of a species between them ; while others have evinced an ap- 

 proximation only, more or less close, between these groups, 

 which will admit of many intervening forms before the con- 

 nexion is perfected. But were the case otherwise, — were I to 

 conceive myself enabled to produce a series that admitted of 

 no chasms, — my knowledge of the present imperfect state of the 

 science, the very conviction which has been forced upon me 

 during the progress of the pleasing task of unravelling the intri- 

 cacies of the subject before us, would give rise to a suspicion in 

 my own mind, that my perfectly continuous series was rather 

 the result of my own fancy, than a delineation of the actual state 



of 



