100 DICTIONARY OF BIRDS 



Even now ornithologists might easily invent or follow worse schemes 

 than that of which the outline has just been given. It looks far more 

 complicated at first sight than it will be found to be on closer inspection, 

 and close inspection it thoroughly deserves ; while, granting the impossi- 

 bility of forming a linear series, the result is remarkably successful. This 

 is owing to the attention paid to anatomical facts, shewing to what good 

 purpose Dr. Stejneger, in addition to his own investigations, has studied 

 the works of ornithotomists, and also the good judgment he has, in most 

 cases, exercised as to the respective value of characters, whether internal 

 or external — and these last are not forgotten. Had he published his 

 classification in a technical form, concisely stating the characters on 

 which it was based, instead of leaving all to be collected by the reader as 

 he goes. Dr. Stejneger would have simplified matters very much, and 

 perhaps have saved some useless labour on the part of others ; but it will 

 assuredly be counted to him for righteousness that in theory at least, if 

 not always in practice, he has held to morphological principles so far as 

 they had been made known. 



Unquestionably the most remarkable recent contribution to System- 

 atic Ornithology is that of Prof. Fiirbringer,. in the Second Volume of his 

 magnificent Untersuchungen zur Morphologie uvd Systematik der Vogel, 

 published in 1888 as a jubilee work by the well-known 'Natura Artis 

 Magistra ' Society of Amsterdam. It is impossible to exaggerate either 

 the importance or the amount of the labour bestowed on these researches, 

 of which the systematic results are but a comparatively small part, 

 though the part that here requires most notice, for they render doubtful 

 much that had before been deemed fairly-well established, and put the 

 Reptilian pedigree of Birds and the position of the Eatitss in a wholly 

 new light, incidentally proving the latter to be derived from ancestors 

 fully endowed with wings. This last position, however, does not upset 

 Prof. Marsh's contention that the first Birds had not the faculty of flight. 

 It only makes evident that between the volant forefathers of the modern 

 Ratitse and the very first Birds, there intervened an indefinite but great 

 number of forms of which few if any traces are known to us, and that the 

 origin of Birds is far more remote than we had been inclined to suppose. 



Birds, considers Prof. Fiirbringer {pp. cit. p. 1563), since they spring 

 from Reptiles, must have begun with toothed forms of small or moderate 

 size, with long tails and four Lizard-like feet, having distinct metacarpals 

 and metatarsals, beside well-formed claws, while their bodies were clothed 

 with a very primitive kind of down. These forms he terms Protoherp- 

 omithes — old Reptilian Birds (JJrTcriechvdgel). To them succeeded 

 forms wherein the down developed into feathers, and the fore and hind 

 limbs differed in build — the former becoming organs of prehensiog^ and 

 the latter the chief instruments of progression. There was a Dinosaur- 

 like transformation of the legs and pelvis, with by-and-by a coalescence 

 of the metatarsals, enabling the creature to become bipedal. These were 

 the Protorthornithes or Prot-Aptenornithes — the first Birds that stood erect, 

 or the first flightless Birds — many of considerable size, but flightless, and 

 they may have left their footprints (Ornithichnites, page 277) on Triassic 

 rocks, and to them may have belonged (p. 1518) Laopteryx (page 280, note 



