INTRO D UC TION 71 



and external features of Birds was naturally deemed a discovery of great 

 value by those ornithologists who thought most highly of the latter, and 

 it was unquestionably of no little practical utility. Further examination 

 also revealed the fact ^ that in certain groups the number of " primaries," 

 or quill-feathers growing from the manus of the wing, formed another 

 characteristic easy of observation. In the Oscines or Polymyodi of Miiller 

 the number was either nine or ten — and if the latter the outermost of 

 them was generally very small. In two of the other groups of which 

 Prof. Cabanis especially treated — groups which had been hitherto more or 

 less confounded with the Oscines — the number of primaries was invari- 

 ably ten, and the outermost of them was comparatively large. This 

 observation was also hailed as the discovery of a fact of extraordinary 

 importance ; and, from the results of these investigations taken altogether. 

 Ornithology was declared by Sundevall, undoubtedly a man who had a 

 right to speak with authority, to have made greater progress than had been 

 achieved since the days of Cuvier. The final disposition of the " Sub- 

 class hisessores " — all the perching birds, that is to say, which are neither 

 Birds-of-Prey nor Pigeons — proposed by Prof. Cabanis, was into four 

 " Orders," as follows : — 



1. Oscines, equal to Miiller's group of the same name. 



2. Glamatores, being a majority of that division of the Picariae of 

 Nitzsch, so called by Andreas Wagner, in 1841,- which have their feet 

 normally constructed. 



3. Strisores, a group now separated from the Glamatores of Wagner, 

 and containing those forms which have their feet abnormally constructed ; 

 and 



4. Scansores, being the Grimpeurs of Cuvier, the Zygodactyli of several 

 other systematists. 



The first of these four " Orders " had been already indefeasibly estab- 

 lished as one perfectly natural, but respecting its details more must pre- 

 sently be said. The remaining three are now seen to be artificial associa- 

 tions, and the second of them, Glamatores, in particular, containing a very 

 heterogeneous assemblage of forms ; but it must be borne in mind that 

 the internal structure of some of them was at that time still more imper- 

 fectly known than now. Yet even then, enough had been ascertained to 

 have saved what are now recognized as the Families Todidee and Tyran- 

 nidse from being placed as " Subfamilies" in the same " Family Golopteridse" ; 

 and several other instances of unharmonious combination in this " Order " 

 might be adduced were it worth while to particularize them. More than 

 that, it would not be diflBicult to shew, only the present is not exactly the 



^ This seems to have been made known by Prof. Cabanis the preceding year to 

 the ' Gesellschaft der Naturforschender Freunde ' {cf. Miiller, Stimmorgane der Pas- 

 serinen, p. 65). Of course the variation to which the number of primaries was 

 subject had not escaped the observation of Nitzsch, but he had scarcely used it as a 

 classificatory character. 



^ Archiv fur Naturgeschichte, vii. 2, pp. 93, 94. The division seems to have 

 been instituted by this author a couple of years earlier in the second edition of his 

 Handbuch der Naturgeschichte (which I have not seen), but not then to have received 

 a scientific name. It included all Picariae which had not " zygodactylous " feet, that 

 is to say, toes placed in pairs, two before and two behind. 



