INTRODUCTION jp 



Hithei'to it will have been seen that our present business has lain 

 wholly in Germany and France, for, as is elsewhere explained, the chief 

 ornithologists of Britain were occupying themselves at this time in a 

 very useless way — not but that there were several distinguished men in 

 this country who were paying due heed at this time to the internal 

 structure of Birds, and some excellent descriptive memoirs on special 

 forms had appeared from their pens, to say nothing of more than one 

 general treatise on ornithic anatomy.^ Yet no one in Britain seems to 

 have attempted to found anj' scientific arrangement of Birds on other 

 than external characters until, in 1837, William Macgillivray issued the 

 first volume of his History of British Birds, wherein, though professing 

 (p. 19) "not to add a new system to the many already in partial use, or 

 that have passed away like their authors," he propounded (pp. 16-18) a 

 scheme for classifying the Birds of Europe at least founded on a " con- 

 sideration of the digestive organs, which merit special attention, on 

 account, not so much of their great importance in the economy of birds, 

 as the nervous, Avascular and other systems are not behind them in this 

 respect ; but because, exhibiting great diversity of form and structure, 

 in accordance with the nature of the food, they are more obviously 

 qualified to aftbrd a basis for the classification of the numerous species 

 of birds " (p. 5 2). Experience has again and again exjiosed the fallacy 

 of this last conclusion, but it is no disparagement of its author to say, 



group of Birds, but that the second mode is much the commonest. The same 

 variations are observable in the second or middle rank, but its side-pieces are said to 

 exist in all groups of Birds without exception. As to the third or posterior rank, 

 when it is complete the three constituent pieces are developed almost simul- 

 taneously ; but its median piece is said often to originate in two, which soon unite, 

 especially when the side-pieces are wanting. By way of examples of L'Herminier's 

 observations, what he says of the two groups that had been the subject of Cuvier's 

 and the elder Geoifroy's contest may be mentioned. In the Gallinw the five well- 

 known pieces or centres of ossification are said to consist of the two side-pieces of 

 the second or middle rank, and the three of the posterior. On two occasions, how- 

 ever, there was found in addition, what may be taken for a representation of the 

 first series, a little ^^ noyau" situated between the coracoids — forming the only 

 instance of all three ranks being present in the same Bird. As regards the Ducks, 

 L'Herminier agreed with Cuvier that there are commonly only two centres of 

 ossification — the side-pieces of the middle rank ; but as these grow to meet one 

 another a distinct median ^^ noyau" also of the same rank, sometimes ajjpears, which 

 soon forms a connexion with each of them. In the Ostrich and its allies no trace 

 of this median centre of ossification ever occurs ; but its existence seems to be 

 invariable in all other Birds. 



^ Owen's celebrated article 'Aves,' in Todd's Gyclopsedia of Anatomy and 

 Physiology (i. pp. 265-358), appeared in 1836, and, as giving a general %-iew of the 

 structure of Birds, needs no praise here ; but its object was not to establish a 

 classification, or throw light especially on systematic aiTangement. So far from 

 that being the case, its distinguished author was content to adopt, as he tells us, the 

 arrangement proposed by Kirby in the Seventh Bridgewater TreaAise (ii. pp. 445- 

 474), being that, it is true, of an estimable zoologist, but of one who had no special 

 knowledge of Ornithology. Indeed it is, as the latter says, that of Linnaeus, 

 improved by Cuvier, with an additional modification of Uliger's — all these three 

 authors having totally ignored any but external characters. Yet it was regarded 

 " as being the one which facilitates the expression of the leading anatomical difi'er- 

 ences which obtain in the class of Birds, and which therefore may be considered as 

 the most natural " ! 



