INTRODUCTION yg 



leaving generalities apart, and restricting ourselves to wliat is here our 

 proper business, there was possibly no branch of Zoology in which so 

 many of the best informed and consequently the most advanced of its workers 

 sooner accej^ted the principles of Evolution than Ornithology, and of 

 course the effect upon its study was very marked. New spirit was given 

 to it. Ornithologists now felt they had something before them that was 

 really worth investigating. Questions of Affinity, and the details of 

 Geographical Distribution, were endowed with a real interest, in comparison 

 with which any interest that had hitherto been taken was a trifling pastime. 

 Classification assumed a wholly different aspect. It had up to this time 

 been little more than the shuffling of cards, the ingenious arrangement of 

 counters in a pretty pattern. Henceforward it was to be the serious study 

 of the workings of Nature in producing the beings we see around us from 

 beings more or less unlike them, that had existed in bygone ages and had 

 been the parents of a varied and varying offspring — our fellow-creatures 

 of to-day. Classification for the first time was something more than the 

 expression of a fancy, not that it had not also its imaginative side. Men 

 began to figure to themselves the original type of some well-marked genus 

 or Family of Birds. They could even discern dimly some generalized 

 stock whence had descended whole groups that now differed strangely in 

 habits and appearance — their discernment aided, may be, by some isolated 

 form which yet retained undeniable traces of a primitive structure. More 

 dimly still visions of what the first Bird may have been like could be 

 reasonably entertained ; and, passing even to a higher antiquity, the 

 Reptilian parent whence all Birds have sprung was brought within reach 

 of man's consciousness. But relieved as it may be by reflexions of this 

 kind — dreams some may pei'haps still call them — the study of Ornithology 

 has unquestionably become harder and more serious ; and a corresponding 

 change in the style of investigation, followed in the works that remain to 

 be considered, will be immediately perceptible. 



That this was the case is undeniably shewn by some remarks of Canon 

 Tristram, who, in treating of the Alaudidm and Saxicolinie of Algeria 

 (whence he had recently brought a large collection of specimens of his 

 own making), stated {Ibis, 1859, pp. 429-433) that he could "not help 

 feeling convinced of the truth of the views set forth by Messrs. Darwin 

 and Wallace," adding that it was " hardly possible, I should think, to 

 illustrate this theory better than by the Larks and Chats of North Africa." 

 It is unnecessary to continue the quotation ; the few words just cited are 

 enough to assure to their author the credit of being (so far as is known) 

 the first ornithological specialist who had the courage publicly to 

 recognize and receive the new and at the time unpopular philosophy.^ But 

 greater work was at hand. In June 1860 the late Prof. W. K. Parker 

 broke, as most will allow, entirely fresh ground, and ground that during 

 his life he continued to till more deeply perhaps than any other man by 

 communicating to the Zoological Society a memoir ' On the Osteology of 

 Balxniceps' (SnoEBiLh), subsequently published in that Society's Transactions 

 (iv. pp. 269-351). Of this contribution to science, as of all the rest which 



^ Wliether Canon Tristram was anticipated in any other, and if so in what, branch 

 of Zoology will be a pleasing enquiry for the historian of the future. 



