that connect the Orders and Families of Birds. 415 



To these birds we shall hereafter observe them united by inter- 

 mediate genera, which partake in a lesser degree of the character 

 of the palraated foot. In fact, the webbed feet of the Flamingo 

 and Avocet appear to me to connect them with the Nat at ores 

 by a relation of analogy rather than of affinity. These birds 

 are the extremes of the groups to which they belong. Both 

 deviate from the habits of their own tribes, by gaining their sus- 

 tenance on the sea-shore or at the mouths of great rivers, and 

 thus become more pelagic in their manners than their conge- 

 ners. It is not, consequently, to be wondered at, that they should 

 assume a conformation in a subordinate degree analogous to that 

 of the true oceanic birds, to whose sphere of life they approach. 

 These two groups being on the whole so widely different in their 

 chief characters, it is not among them that we may expect to find 

 the passage between the two aquatic orders. We shall perceive 

 it more strongly indicated by the lobate-footed Fulica, which 

 recedes from the Grallatores and approaches the Notatores, not 

 only by the rudiments of the web that partially fringes the toes, 

 but by its habits of swimming. I cannot, however, agree with 

 the views of those writers, who place this genus among the true 

 Natatores, and form it into a subdivision of that order in con- 

 junction with the genera Phalaropus and Podiceps : much less 

 can I accord with that disposition which places these three 

 groups, so dissimilar in manners, and even in the construc- 

 tion of the foot*, in a separate order of their own. Fulica, in a 



natural 



* I know no two birds in which the construction of the foot, and the use to which it is 

 applied, is more dissimilar than in Fulica and Podiceps, although they certainly belong 

 to approaching groups. Fulica has the true ambulalorial foot of the Grallatores, with 

 the rudiments of a web that exhibit a partial deviation from that order and an approach 

 to the swimming powers of the Natatores. Podiceps has a true natatorial foot, and 

 one in which the powers of swimming and diving are strongly developed, as will appear 

 in the course of the succeeding observations. The hind toes of both these genera arfe 

 totally unlike : while the different position of their legs evince the extreme distance 

 between their respective stations among the birds that swim ; one group belonging to 



the 



