INTRODUCTION iii 



Under the name Impennes. we have a group of Birds, the Penguins, 

 smaller even than the last, and one over which until lately systematists 

 have been sadly at fault ; for, though we as yet know little definite as tc 

 their embryology, no one, free from bias, can examine any member of the 

 group, either externally or internally, without perceiving how completely 

 different it is from any others of the Carinate division. There is per- 

 haps scarcely a feather or a bone which is not diagnostic, and nearly 

 every character hitherto observed points to a low morphological rank. 

 The title of an Order can scarcely be refused to the Impennes. 



The group known as Pygopodes has been often asserted to be closely 

 akin to the Impennes, and we have seen that Brandt combined the two 

 under the name of Urinatores, but of their essential difference there can 

 now be no doubt, and indeed it is hard to look upon Pygopodes as a natural 

 group, so many are the differences between the Podicipedidx or Grebes 

 and Colymbidee,^ or Divers, though recent morphologists agree to unite 

 them, while the affinity of the Divers to the Auks seems to be still more 

 uncertain, and there appears to be ground for considering the Alcidae, to 

 be much modified relatives of the Laridee. These are points deserving 

 of still more attention on the part of embryologists than they have 

 hitherto received. Under the improperly applied name of Gavias the 

 Gulls and their close allies form a very natural section, but it probably 

 hardly merits the rank of an Order more than the Pygopodes, for its 

 relations to the large and somewhat multiform though very natural 

 group Limicolse have to be taken into consideration.^ The Limicoline 

 genera Dromas and Ghionis have many points of resemblance to the 

 Laridx ; and on the whole the proper inference would seem to be that 

 the Limicolse, or something very like them, form the parent-stock whence 

 have descended the Gavise, from which or from their ancestral forms the 

 Alcidse have proceeded as a degenerate branch. If this hypothesis be 

 correct, the association of these three groups would constitute an Order, 

 of which the highest Family would perhaps be Otididae, the Bustards, 

 associated with the foregoing by Prof. Fiirbringer, but regarded by Dr. 

 Gadow as allied to Cranes, Gruidse, and until further research shews 

 which view can be maintained the matter must remain in doubt. On 

 the other hand the Petrels, which form the group Tubinares, seem for 

 several reasons to be perfectly distinct from the Gulls and their allies, and 

 may be taken to rank as an Order. 



Considerable doubt had long been expressed as to the existence of an 

 " Order " Aledorides, and it has just been stated that no one can now 

 regard it as a natural group. One of the Families included in it by its 

 founder is Gariamidae (Seriema), the true place of which has been a 

 puzzle to many systematizers. There is nothing, however, here to add to 



^ American ornithologists have lately used this term for the Grebes, to the great 

 disturbance of nomenclature. It is apparently from the ancestors of the Oolynxbidfe, 

 before they lost their teeth, that Hesperornis branched off as a degenerate, bulky and 

 flightless form. 



" The late Prof. Parker long ago observed [Trans. Zool. Soc. v. p. 150) that 

 characters exhibited by Gulls when young, but lost by them when adult, are found 

 in certain Plovers at all ages, and hence it would appear that the "Oavim" are but 

 more advanced LimicoliB. 



