INTRODUCTION xvii 



and those of Dr. Bowdler Sharpe as set forth in 

 the first volume of the " Catalogue of Birds in the 

 British Museum." ^ 



Leading ornithologists in America, including 

 Messrs. Allen, Brewster, Chapman, Coues, Hart 

 Merriam, and Robert Ridgway, have given their 

 sanction to a scheme of classification which com- 

 mences with the Pygopodes (Grebes, Divers, and 

 Auks), and ends with the Passeres (family Tur- 

 didae), a plan which has been more recently adopted 

 by Mr. A. H. Evans in his volume on Birds 

 in the "Cambridge Natural History" (1899), al- 

 though he prefers to end with the Fringillidae 

 and Emherizidae, between which and the Turdidse 

 he would interpose the Dippers, Wrens, Swallows, 

 Shrikes, Tits, Orioles, Crows, Starlings, and other 

 families. 



In 1892, when the authorities of the U.S. 

 National Museum, Washington, had to give in- 

 structions for the systematic arrangement of the 

 series of mounted birds at the Chicago Exhibition, 

 a collection which numbered some 1300 specimens, 

 representing all the families (104) found in the 



1 It is but fair to Dr. Sharpe to state that he does not now adhere 

 to the views held by him in 1874, the date of the catalogue referred to, 

 but, to judge by his treatise on " British Birds," published in Allen's 

 " Naturalist's Library" (reviewed by me in The Zoologist for Dec. 1894), 

 he prefers to commence with the Crows, and in this he has been fol- 

 lowed by the late Dr. Mivart ("Elements of Ornithology"), while 

 several of his contemporaries, though agreeing with him that the 

 Passerine birds should head the list in any scheme of classification, 

 consider that the Thrushes, as typical song birds, should take pre- 

 cedence of all others. 



h 



