io8 DICTIONARY OF BIRDS 



advantage is to reveal the existence, at so early an epoch, of Birds with 

 some portion of their structure as highly organized as the highest of the 

 present day, a fact witnessed by its foot, which, so far as can be judged by 

 its petrified relics, might well be that of a modern Crow. The fossil 

 remains of most other Birds are too imperfect to help the systematist 

 much ; but the grand discoveries of Prof. Marsh, spoken of above, afford 

 further hints as to the taxonomy of the Class, and their bearing deserves 

 the closest consideration. 



And now to review as briefly as possible the present position of the 

 taxonomy of Birds. It is allowed by almost all that Archseopteryx and its 

 allies, with some of which we may reasonably hope time will make us 

 acquainted, must stand alone whether by the name of Saururse or 

 Archseornithes. For the rest we may, with Prof. Fiirbringer, revive Prof. 

 Hackel's designation of Ornithurse, or adopt the Neornithes of Dr. Gadow ; 

 but the next steps of the latter cannot be followed without misgivings. 

 We should be content to wait further discoveries before assigning a definite 

 place to very many fossil forms of which our knowledge is as fragmentary 

 as are the specimens on which it is based. It appears impossible yet to 

 correlate the Stereornithes, Diatryma, Gastornis and the rest ^ with recent 

 forms, some of which though extinct essentially resembled many that now 

 exist, and confusion can only arise from any attempt to do so. Perhaps 

 it would be better if these last could be spoken of as constituting a separate 

 division, for which Dr. Stejneger has somewhat unhappily appropriated Dr. 

 Gill's name Eurhipidurx (page 99) ; but this division would have to be 

 immediately subdivided into Carinatx and Ratitse, for, fi;lly admitting 

 that Prof. Fiirbringer has shewn the latter to be degenerate descendants of 

 the former (page 101), it seems impossible not to recognize each as a distinct 

 group. His argument in favour of the multiple origin of the Eatitse is 

 hardly convincing. We can well believe that the examples he cites of 

 Didus, Stringops, Gnemiornis and other modern flightless Birds are highly 

 instructive as to the way in which the Ratitx have been brought into their 

 present condition ; but the characters possessed by all of them in common, 

 as first adduced by Huxley, and to those characters others have been 

 added by Dr. Gadow, point indubitably to a single or common descent. 



Seeing that we have no knowledge of the presumed Carinate ancestors 

 of the Ratitse, it might be thought an open question which of the two 

 existing branches should be first considered ; but it is evident that those 

 ancestors, being the collaterals of the ancestors of the modern Carinatse, 



^ While these pages are under revision for the press, a renewed investigation of 

 the famous South -American fossils, most of which are now in the British Museum, 

 more than justifies the view taken when I wrote the above. The results arrived at by- 

 Mr. Andrews and Dr. Gadow, as briefly announced by the latter {Ibis, 1896, pp. 586, 

 587) are that Stereornithes are abolished as a taxonomic group. Phororhacos, of which 

 Stereoriiis seems to be a synonym, is declared to belong to the " Oruiformes" and 

 Pdecyornis and Liornis are likely to stand near it. Dryornis appears to belong to the 

 " Falconiformes," though Mesembryomis is perhaps a forerunner of the Rheidee, and 

 therefore probably Ratite. More important is the fact that the fossils are not even 

 Upper Oligocene, but Miocene, and none of the forms has any relation to Gastornis. 

 Recent excavation of the matrix, as Mr. Andrews has been so good as to shew me, 

 proves that Phororhacos had an ossified interorbital septum, which had before been 

 thought to be wanting (page 905). 



