70 DICTIONARY OF BIRDS 



That Dr. Cornay was on the brink of making a discovery of consider- 

 able merit will by and by appear ; but, with every disposition to regard 

 his investigations favourably, it cannot be said that he accomplished it. 

 No account need be taken of the criticism which denominated his attempt 

 " unphilosophical and one-sided," nor does it signify that his proposals 

 either attracted no attention or were generally received with indifference. 

 Such is commonly the fate of any deep-seated reform of classification pro- 

 posed by a comparatively unknown man, unless it happen to possess some 

 extraordinarily taking qualities, or be explained with an abundance of 

 pictorial illustration. This was not the case here. Whatever proofs Dr. 

 Cornay may have had to satisfy himself of his being on the right track, 

 these proofs were not adduced in sufficient number nor arranged with 

 sufficient skill to persuade a somewhat stiff-necked generation of the 

 truth of his views — -for it was a generation whose leaders, in France at 

 any rate, looked with suspicion upon any one who professed to go beyond 

 the bounds which the genius of Cuvier had been unable to overpass, and 

 regarded the notion of upsetting any of the positions maintained by him 

 as verging upon profanity. Moreover, Dr. Cornay's scheme was not given 

 to the world with any of those adjuncts that not merely please the eye 

 but are in many cases necessary, for, thougTi on a subject which reqixired 

 for its proper comprehension a series of plates, it made even its final 

 appearance unadorned by a single explanatory figure, and in a journal, 

 respectable and well-known indeed, but one not of the highest scientific 

 rank. Add to all this that its author, in his summary of the practical 

 results of his investigations, committed a grave sin in the ej^es of rigid 

 systematists by ostentatiously arranging the names of the forty types 

 which he selected to prove his case wholly without order, and without 

 any intimation of the greater or less affinity any one of them might bear 

 to the rest. That success should attend a scheme so inconclusively 

 elaborated could not be expected. 



The same year which saw the promulgation of the crude scheme just 

 described, as well as the publication of the final researches of Miiller, 

 witnessed also another attempt at the classification of Birds, much more 

 limited indeed in scope, but, so • far as it went, regarded by most orni- 

 thologists of the time as almost final in its operation. Under the vague 

 title of ' Ornithologische Notizen ' Prof. Cabanis of Berlin contributed to 

 the Archiv fiir Naturgeschichte (xiii. 1, pp. 186-256, 308-352) an essay in 

 two parts, wherein, following the researches of Miiller^ on the syrinx, in 

 the course of which a correlation had been shewn to exist between the 

 whole or divided condition of the planta or hind part of the " tarsus " 

 (first noticed, as has been said, by Keyserling and Blasius) and the presence 

 or absence of the perfect song-apparatus, the younger author found an 

 agreement which seemed almost invariable in this respect, and he also 

 pointed out that the planta of the different groups of Birds in which it 

 is divided, is divided in difl'erent modes, the mode of division being 

 generally characteristic of the group. Such a coincidence of the internal 



^ On the other hand, Miiller makes several references to the labours of Prof. 

 Cabanis. The investigations of both authors must have been proceeding simultan- 

 eously, and it matters little which actiially appeared first. 



