62 DICTIONARY OF BIRDS 



In the year last mentioned the greater part of these was separately issued 

 under the title of Beitritge zur Kenntniss der Naturgeschichte der Vdgel. 

 Herein the author first assigned anatomical reasons for rearranging the 

 Order ATiseres of Linnseus, the Natatores of Illiger, who, so long before as 

 1811, had proposed a new distribution of it into six Families, the defini- 

 tions of which, as was his wont, he had drawn from external characters 

 only. Brandt now retained very nearly the same arrangement as his 

 predecessor ; but, notwithstanding that he could trust to the firmer 

 foundation of internal framework, he took at least two retrograde steps. 

 First he failed to see the great structural difference between the Penguins 

 (which Illiger had placed as a group, Impennes, of equal rank to his other 

 Families) and the Auks, Divers and Grebes, Pygopodes — combining all of 

 them to form a " Typus " (to use his term) Urinatores ; and secondly he 

 admitted among the Natatores, though as a distinct " Typus " Podoidse, 

 the genera Podoa (Finfoot), and Fulica (Coot), which are now 

 known to be allied to the Ballidse. At the same time he corrected 

 the error made by Illiger in associating the Phalaropes with 

 these forms, rightly declaring their relationship to Tringa, a point of 

 order which other systematists were long in admitting. On the whole 

 Brandt's labours were of no small service in asserting the principle that 

 consideration must be paid to osteology ; for owing to his position he was 

 able to gain more attention to his views than some of his less favourably 

 placed brethren had succeeded in doing. 



In the same year (1839) another slight advance was made in the 

 classification of the true Passeres. Keyserling and Blasius briefly pointed 

 out {Arch.f. Naturgesch. v. pp. 332-334) that, while all the other Birds 

 provided with perfect song-muscles had the " planta " or hind part of the 

 "tarsus" covered with two long and undivided horny plates, the Larks 

 had this part divided by many transverse sutures, so as to be scutellated 

 behind as well as in front ; just as is the case in many of the Passerines 

 which have not the singing-apparatus, and also in the Hoopoe. The 

 importance of this singular but superficial departure from the normal 

 strvicture has been so needlessly exaggerated as a character that at the 

 present time its value is apt to be unduly depreciated. In so large and 

 so homogeneous a group as that of the true Passeres, a constant character 

 of this kind is not to be despised as a practical mode of separating the 

 Birds which possess it ; and, more than this, it would appear that the 

 discovery thus announced was the immediate means of leading to a series 

 of investigations of a much more important and lasting nature — those of 

 Johannes Miiller to be presently mentioned. 



Again we must recur to that indefatigable and most original in- 

 vestigator Nitzsch, who, having never intermitted his study of the 

 particular subject of his first contribution to science, in 1833 brought out 

 at Halle, where he was Professor of Zoology, an essay with the title 

 Pterylographix Avium Pars prior. It seems that this was issued as much 

 with the object of inviting assistance from others in view of future 

 labours, since the materials at his disposal were scanty, as with that of 

 making known the results to which his researches had already led him. 

 Indeed he only communicated copies of this essay to a few friends, and 



