66 DICTIONARY OF BIRDS 



The treatise of Kessler on the osteology of Birds' feet, published in the 

 Bulletin of the Moscow Society of Naturalists for 1841, next claims a few- 

 words, though its scope is rather to shew differences than affinities ; but 

 treatment of that kind is undoubtedly useful at times in indicating that 

 alliances generally admitted are unnatural ; and this is the case here, for, 

 following Cuvier's method, the author's researches prove the artificial 

 character of some of its associations. While furnishing — almost uncon- 

 sciously, however — additional evidence for overthrowing that classification, 

 there is, nevertheless, no attempt made to construct a better one ; and the 

 elaborate tables of dimensions, both absolute and proportional, suggestive 

 as is the whole tendency of the author's observations, seem not to lead to 

 any very practical result, though the systematist's need to look beneath 

 the integument, even in parts that are so comparatively little hidden as 

 Birds' feet, is once more made beyond all question apparent. 



It has already been mentioned that Macgillivray furnished Audubon 

 with a series of descriptions of some parts of the anatomy of American 

 Birds, from subjects supplied to him by that enthusiastic naturalist, 

 whose zeal and prescience, it may be called, in this respect merits all 

 praise. Thus he (prompted very likely by Macgillivray) wrote : — " I 

 believe the time to be approaching when much of the results obtained 

 from the inspection of the exterior alone will be laid aside ; when 

 museums filled with stuffed skins will be considered insufficient to afford 

 a knowledge of bii-ds ; and when the student will go forth, not only to 

 observe the habits and haunts of animals, but to preserve specimens of 

 them to be carefully dissected" (Orn. Biogr. iv. Introduction, p. xxiv.) 

 As has been stated, the first of this series of anatomical descriptions 

 appeared in the fourth volume of his work, published in 1838, but 

 they were continued until its completion with the fifth volume in the 

 following year, and the whole was incorporated into what may be termed 

 its second edition. The Birds of America, which appeared between 1840 

 and 1844. Among the many species whose anatomy Macgillivray thus 

 partly described from autopsy were at least half a dozen of those now 

 referred to the Family Tyrant-birds, but then included, with many others, 

 according to the vague and rudimentary notions of classification of the 

 time, in what was termed the Family " Muscicapinse." In all these 

 species he found the vocal organs to differ essentially in structure from 

 those of other Birds of the Old World, which we now call Passerine, or, to 

 be still more precise, Oscinine. But by him these last were most 

 arbitrarily severed, dissociated from their allies, and wrongly combined 

 with other forms by no means nearly related to them (Brit. Birds, i. pj). 

 17, 18) which he also examined ; and he practically, though not literally,^ 



excellent translatiou by Dallas of Nitzsch's Pterylography, and thereby, however tardily, 

 justice was at length rendered by British ornithologists to one of their greatest foreign 

 brethren. The Society had the good fortune to obtain the ten original copper-plates, 

 all but one drawn by the author himself, wherewith the work was illustrated. It is 

 only to be regretted that the quarto size in which it appeared was not retained, for 

 the folio form of the English version puts a needless impediment in the way of its 

 common and convenient use. On the important subject of the pterylography of Birds' 

 wings see the works cited under Remiqes (page 781, note). 



^ Not literally, because a few other forms such as the genera Polioptila and 



