REMARKS ON CLASSIFICATION AND 

 NOMENCLATURE. 



The class of Birds is perhaps the most distinctly defined in 

 the entire series of organized beings ; bnt the general similarity 

 of the different species upon which the obvious connexion of 

 the whole depends, renders it extremely difficult to separate 

 them into groups distinguishable from each other by well- 

 marked characters. Hence the great diversity of opinion re- 

 specting the limits of the genera, families, and orders of this 

 class ; which, in fact, is such that no two original writers on 

 the subject have adopted the same divisions, and that while 

 in the system of one there are only four great sections, there 

 are not fewer than thirty-eight in that of another. The modifi- 

 cations of form and structure, and the minute gradations by 

 which the species are multifariously connected, while they 

 seem to render it impossible to elicit a symmetrical and gene- 

 rally intelligible arrangement, render it easy to invent classifi- 

 cations, founded on partial views, so apparently simple and 

 philosophical, that he only Vvdio is tolerably well acquainted 

 with a considerable number of facts and phenomena, can be 

 truly sensible of their numerous absurdities. 



The apparent facilities afforded in studying birds by the 

 diversified development and colouring of their plumage, the 

 multiplied forms of their bills, feet, and wings, and their gene- 

 ral distribution over the globe, have rendered them favourite 

 objects of examination, and led some persons boldly to assume 

 the character of legislating ornithologists, before making them- 

 selves acquainted w^ith even the rudiments of the science ; the 

 foundation of wdiich, as of every department of zoology, exists 

 only in the anatomical structure of the objects to w^hich it 



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