INTRODUCTION 8g 



uniformly and persistently protested against the inside being better than 

 the outside. In thus acting he proved himself a true follower of his 

 great countryman Linnaeus ; but, without disparagement of his efforts in 

 this respect, it must be said that when internal and external characters 

 appeared to be in conflict he gave, perhaps with unconscious bias, a 

 preference to the latter, for he belonged to a school of zoologists whose 

 natural instinct was to believe that such a conflict always existed. Hence 

 his efforts, praiseworthy as they were from several points of view, and 

 particularly so in regard to some details, failed to satisfy the philosophic 

 taxonomer when generalizations and deeper principles were concerned, and 

 in his practice in respect to certain technicalities of classification he was, in 

 the eyes of the orthodox, a transgressor. Thus instead of contenting him- 

 self with terms that had met with pretty general approval, such as Class, 

 Subclass, Order, Suborder, Family, Subfamily and so on, he introduced 

 into his final scheme other designations, "Agmen," "Cohors," "Phalanx" 

 and the like, which to the ordinary student of Ornithology convey an 

 indefinite meaning, if any meaning at all. He also carried to a very 

 extreme limit his views of nomenclature, which were certainly not in 

 accordance with those held by most zoologists, though this is a matter so 

 trifling as to need no details in illustration. It is by no means easy to 

 set forth briefly, and at the same time intelligibly, to any but experts, 

 the final scheme of Sundevall, owing to the number of new names intro- 

 duced by him, and there is no need here to make the attempt, for experts 

 would rather consult the work itself or the English version of it.^ Praised 

 in various quarters as Sundevall's perfected System was on its appearance, 

 the present writer felt from the first that it would speedily be seen to 

 what little purpose so many able men had laboured if arrangement and 

 grouping so manifestly artificial — the latter often of forms possessing no 

 real affinity — could pass as a natural method. He was not so sanguine as 

 to hope that it might be the last of its kind, though any one accustomed 

 to look deeper than the surface must have seen its numerous defects, and 

 almost every one, whether so accustomed or not, ought by its means to be 

 brought to the conclusion that, when a man of Sundevall's knowledge 

 and experience could not, by trusting only to external characters, do 

 better than this, the most convincing proof is afforded of the inability of 

 external characters alone to produce anything save ataxy. The principal 

 merits it possesses are confined to the minor arrangement of some of the 

 Oscines ; but even here many of the alliances, such, for instance, as that 

 of Pitta with the true Thrushes, are indefensible on any rational grounds, 

 and some, as that of Accentor with the Weaver-birds, verge upon the 

 ridiculous, while on the other hand the interpolation of the American 

 "Warblers, Mniotiltidee, between the normal Warblers of the Old World 

 and the Thrushes is as bad — esjDCcially when the genus Mniotilta is placed, 

 notwithstanding its differentwing-formula, with the Tree-creepers, Certhiidse. 

 The whole work unfortunately betrays throughout an utter want of the 

 sense of proportion. In many of the large groups very slight differences 

 are allowed to keep the forms exhibiting them widely apart, while in 



^ Sundevall's Tentamen. Translated into English with Notes, by Francis 

 Nicholson. London: 1889. 



