INTRODUCTION j/ 



23-52), a brief description from Nitzsch's pen of the peculiarities of the 

 internal structure of nearly every genus is incorporated with the author's 

 prefatory remarks, as each passed under consideration, and these de- 

 scriptions being almost withoiit exception so drawn up as to be com- 

 parative are accordingly of great utility to the student of classification, 

 though they have been greatly neglected. Upon these descriptions he was 

 still engaged till death, in 1837, put an end to his labours, when his 

 place as Naumann's assistant for the remainder of the work was taken by 

 Rudolph Wagner ; but, from time to time, a few more, which he had 

 already completed, made their posthumous appearance in it, and, even in 

 recent years, some selections from his unpublished papers have through 

 the care of Giebel been presented to the public. Throughout the whole 

 of this series the same marvellous industry and scrupulous accuracy are 

 manifested, and attentive study of it will shew how many times Nitzsch 

 anticipated the conclusions at which it. took some modern taxonomers fifty 

 years to arrive. Yet over and over again his determination of the affinities 

 of several groups even of European Birds was disregarded ; and his labours, 

 being contained in a bulky and costly work, were hardly known at all 

 outside of his own country, and within it by no means appreciated so much 

 as they deserved ^ — for even Naumann himself, who gave them publication, 

 and was doubtless in some degree influenced by them, utterly failed to 

 perceive the importance of the characters oftered by the song-muscles of 

 certain groups, though their peculiarities were all duly described and 

 recorded by his coadjutor, as some indeed had been long before by Cuvier 

 in his famous dissertation ^ on the organs of voice in Birds {Legons d'anat. 

 com]), iv. pp. 450-491). Nitzsch's name was subsequently dismissed by 

 Cuvier without a word of praise, and in terms which would have been 

 applicable to many another and inferior author, while Temminck, terming 

 Naumann's work an '■'■ ouvrage de luxe," — it being in truth one of the 

 cheapest for its contents ever published, — eff'ectually shut it out from the 

 realms of science. In Britain it seems to have been positively unknown 

 until quoted some years after its completion by a catalogue-compiler on 

 account of some peculiarities of nomenclature which it presented. ** 



Now we must return to France, where, in 1827, L'Herminier, a Creole 

 of Guadeloupe and a pupil of De Blainville's, contributed to the Ades of 

 the Linnaean Society of Paris for that year (vi. pp. 3-93) the ' Recherches 

 sur I'appareil sternal des Oiseaux,' which the precept and example of his 

 master had prompted him to undertake, and Cuvier had found for him 

 the means of executing. A second and considerably enlarged edition of 

 this very remarkable treatise was published as a separate work in the 

 following year. We have already seen that De Blainville, though fully 

 persuaded of the great value of sternal features as a method of classification, 

 had been compelled to fall back upon the old pedal characters so often 



^ Their value was, however, understood by Gloger, who in 1834, as will presently 

 be seen, expressed his regret at not being able to use them. 



^ Cuvier's first observations on the subject seem to have appeared in the Magazin 

 EncyclopkliqiK for 1795 (ii. pp. 330, 358). 



^ However, to this catalogue-compiler my gratitude is due, for thereby I became 

 acquainted with the work and its merits. 



