INTRODUCTION 57 



the only) part of a Vollstandiges Handbuch der Naturgeschiclite der Vogel 

 Eiiropa's, treating of the Laud-birds. In the Introduction to this book 

 (p. xxxviii. note) he expressed his regret at not being able to use as 

 fully as he could wish the excellent researches of Nitzsch which were 

 then appearing (as has been above said) in the successive parts of Nau- 

 mann's great work. Notwithstanding this, to Gloger seems to belong 

 the credit of being the first author to avail himself, in a book intended 

 for practical ornithologists, of the new light that had already been shed 

 on Systematic Ornithology ; and accordingly we have the second Order 

 of his arrangement, the Aves Passerirtee, divided into two Suborders : — 

 Singing Passerines (vielodusx), and Passerines without an apparatus of 

 Song-muscles (anomalse) — the latter including what some later writers 

 called Picariae. For the rest his classification demands no particular 

 remark ; but that in a work of this kind he had the courage to 

 recognize, for instance, such a fact as the essential difference between 

 Swallows and Swifts, lifts him considerably above the crowd of other 

 ornithological writers of his time. 



An improvement on the old method of classification by purely 

 external characters was introduced to the Academy of Sciences of Stock- 

 holm by Sundevall in 1835, and was published the following year in 

 its Handlingar (pp. 43-130). This was the foundation of a more 

 extensive work of which, from the influence it still exerts, it will be 

 necessary to treat later, and there will be no need now to enter much 

 into details respecting the earlier performance. It is sufficient here to 

 remark that the author, even then a man of great erudition, must have 

 been aware of the turn which taxonomy was taking ; but, not being 

 able to divest himself of the older notion that external characters were 

 superior to those furnished by the study of internal structure, and that 

 Comparative Anatomy, instead of being a part of Zoology, was some- 

 thing distinct from it, he seems to have endeavoured to form a scheme 

 which, while not running wholly counter to the teachings of Com- 

 parative Anatomists, should yet rest ostensibly on external characters. 

 With this view he studied the latter most laboriously, and certainly not 

 without siiccess, for he brought into prominence several points that had 

 hitherto escaped the notice of his predecessors. He also admitted among 

 his characteristics a physiological consideration (apparently derived from 

 Oken 1) dividing the class Aves into two sections Altrices and Praecoces, 

 according as the young were fed by their parents, or, from the first, fed 

 themselves. But at this time he was encumbered with the hazy 

 doctrine of analogies, which, if it did not act to his detriment, was 

 assuredly of no service to him. He jDrefixed an ' Idea Systematis ' to 

 his ' Expositio ' ; and the former, which appears to represent his real 

 opinion, differs in arrangement very considerably from the latter. Like 

 Gloger, Sundevall in his ideal system separated the true Passerines from 

 all other Birds, calling them Volucres ; but he took a step further, for 

 he assigned to them the highest rank, wherein nearly every recent 



■' He says from Oken's Naturgeschichte fur Schulen, published in 1821, but the 

 division is to be found in that author's earlier Lehrbuch der Zoologie (ii. p. 371), 

 which appeared in 1816. 



