48 DICTIONARY OF BIRDS 



The most novel feature, and one tlie importance of wliicli most 

 ornithologists of the present day are fully prepared to admit, is of course 

 the separation of the Class Aves into two great Divisions, which from one 

 of the most obvious distinctions they present were called by its author 

 Carinatse ^ and Eatitx,^ according as the sternum possesses a keel or not. 

 But Merrem, who subsequently communicated to the Academy of Berlin 

 a more detailed memoir on the "flat-breasted" Birds,^ was careful not 

 here to rest his Divisions on the presence or absence of their sternal 

 character alone. He concisely cites (p. 238) no fewer than eight other 

 characters of more or less value as peculiar to the Carinate Division, the 

 first of which is that the feathers have their barbs furnished with hooks, 

 in consequence of which the barbs, including those of the wing -quills, 

 cling closely together ; while among the rest may be mentioned the 

 position of the furcula and coracoids,^ which keep the wing-bones apart ; 

 the limitation of the number of the lumbar vertebrae to fifteen, and of the 

 carpals to two ; as well as the divergent direction of the iliac bones, — the 

 corresponding characters peculiar to the Eatite Division being (p. 259) 

 the disconnected condition of the barbs of the feathers, through the 

 absence of any hooks whereby they might cohere ; the non-existence of 

 the furcula, and the coalescence of the coracoids with the scapulae (or, aa 

 he expressed it, the extension of the scapnlte to supply the place of the 

 coracoids, which he thought were wanting) ; the lumbar vertebrse being 

 twenty and the carpals three in number ; and the parallelism of the iliac 

 bones. 



As for Merrem's partitioning of the inferior groups there is less to be 

 said in its praise as a whole, though credit must be given to his anatomical 

 knowledge for leading him to the perception of several afiinities, as well 

 as diff'erences, that had never before been suggested by superficial 

 systematists. But it must be confessed that (chiefly, no doubt, from 

 paucity of accessible material) he overlooked many points, both of alliance 

 and the opposite, which since his time have gradually come to be 

 admitted. For instance, he seems not to have been aware of the dis- 

 tinction, already shewn by Nitzsch (as above mentioned) to exist, between 

 the Swallows and the Swifts ; and, by putting the genus Coracias among his 

 Oscines Tenuirostres ^ without any remark, proved that he was not in all 

 respects greatly in advance of his age ; but on the other hand he most 

 righteously judged that some species hitherto referred to the genera 

 Certhia and UpiqM required removal to other positions, and it is much to 



dare uot, however, assign a place, for instance, Buceros, Heematopus, Mero^js, 

 Glareola (Brisson's genus, by the way) and Palmnedea, 



^ From carina, a keel. 



2 From ratis, a raft or flat-bottomed barge. 



2 " Beschreibung der Gerippes eines Casuars nebst einigen beilaufigeu Bemer- 

 kungen iiber die fiachbriistigen Vogel." — Abhandl. der Berlin. Akademie, Phys. 

 Klasse, 1817, pp. 179-198, tabb. i.-iii. 



* Merrem, as did many others in his time, calls the cokacoids "daviadw" ; but 

 it is now well understood that in Birds the real daviculw form the furcula. 



5 He also placed the genus Todus in the same group, but it must be Ijorne iu mind 

 that in his time a great many Birds were referred to that genus which certainly do 

 uot belong to it, and it may well have been that he never had the opportunity of 

 examining a specimen of the genus as nov/adays restricted. 



