152 



THE OSPREY. 



WILLIAM SWAINSON AND HIS TIMES.— XI. 



By Theodore Gill, Washington, D. C. 



( Continued from I 'ol. I '. page 137. ) 



Fourth, he discusses at great length the propo- 

 sition that characteristics of the third primary 

 divisions of each circular group are repeated in 

 the others, and this proposition is practically 

 declared to be original. He declares (p. 241). 



"Upon this generalisation we have not been 

 enabled to receive any assistance from the 

 labours of our predecessors, since we are not 

 aware of its having hitherto been hinted at". 



He devotes a long chapter ("Chap. ii"=pp. 

 241-266) exclusively to this proposition. He pre- 

 ludes (p. 242):— 



"I. The first distinction of typical groups is 

 implied by the name they bear. The animals 

 they contain are the most perfectly organized: 

 that is to say, are endowed with the greatest 

 number of perfections, and capable of perform- 

 ing, to the greatest extent, the functions which 

 peculiarly characterise their respective circles. 

 This is universal in all typical groups: but there 

 is a marked difference between the types of a 

 tvpical circle, and the types of an aberrant one. 

 In the first we find a combination of properties 

 concentrated, as it were, in certain individuals, 

 without any one of these preponderating, in a 

 remarkable degree, over the others; whereas in 

 the second it is quite the reverse: in these last, 

 one faculty is developed in the highest degree, 

 as if to compensate for the total absence, or 

 very slight development, of others". 



It is noteworthy that Swainson considered the 

 Crow as the "type of types" among birds, and 

 in this respect, his views are share! by some 

 eminent naturalists who, nevertheless, would 

 energetically repudiate his peculiar reasons 

 for so thinking- and his line of argumentation. 

 His reasons are thus stated (p. 243). 



"Let us exemplify this proposition by fami- 

 liar instances. The Crow has been most truly 

 considered the pre-eminent type of all birds,* it 

 is also the type of a typical circle. It conse- 

 quently unites, in itself, a greater number of 

 properties than are to be found, individually, in 

 any other genus of birds; as if, in fact, it had 

 taken from all the other orders a portion of their 

 peculiar qualities, for the purpose of exhibiting 

 in what manner they could be combined. From 

 the rapacious birds this "type of types," as the 

 Crow has been justly called, takes the power of 

 soaring in the air, and of seizing upon living 

 birds like the Hawks, while its habit of devour- 

 ing putrid substances, and picking out the eyes 

 of young animals, is borrowed from the vultures. 

 From the scansorial or climbing order it takes 

 the faculty of pecking the ground, and discover- 

 ing its food when hidden from the eye, while 

 the Parrot family gives it the taste for vegeta- 

 ble food, and furnishes it with great cunning 

 sagacity, and powers of imitation, even to coun- 

 terfeiting the human voice. Next come the 

 order of waders, who impart their quota to the 



perfection of the Crow, by giving to it great 

 powers of flight, and perfect facility in walking, 

 such being among- the chief attributes of the 

 grallatorial order. Lastly, the aquatic birds 

 contribute their portion, by giving- this terres- 

 trial bird the power of feeding not only upon 

 fish, which are their peculiar food, but actually 

 of occasionally catching it. t In this wonderful 

 manner do we find the Crow partially invested 

 with the united properties of all other birds, 

 while in its own order — that of the Insessores, or 

 perchers — it stands the pre-eminent type. Here, 

 then, is an example of the characteristic pro- 

 perties of the .type of a typical circle". 



The sub-typical group is next explained (p. 

 245). 



"II. Sib-Typical groups, as the name implies, 

 are a degree lower in organisation than those 

 last described; and thus exhibit an intermediate 

 character between typical and aberrant divi- 

 sions. They do not comprise the largest in- 

 dividuals in bulk, but always those which are 

 the most powerfully armed, either for inflicting 

 injury on their own class, for exciting terror, 

 producing injury, or creating annoyance to 

 man. Their dispositions are often sanguinary; 

 since the forms most conspicuous among them 

 live by rapine, and subsist on the blood of other 

 animals. They are. in short, symbolically the 

 types of evil; and in such an extraordinary 

 way is this principle modified in the smaller 

 groups, that even among insects, where no 

 power is possessed but that of causing annoyance 

 or temporary pain, we find, in the sub-typical 

 order of the Annu/osa [Aptera Lin. I, the differ- 

 ent race of scorpions. Atari, spiders, and all 

 those repulsive insects, whose very aspect is 

 forbidding, and whose bite or sting- is often 

 capable of inflicting serious bodily injury. If. 

 again, we look to the sub-typical groups of quad- 

 rupeds and of birds, this principle of evil is 

 developed in the highest degree; both are armed 

 with powerful talons, both live on slaughtered 

 victims, and both are gloomy, unsocial, and 

 untameable". 



Swainson had incidentally in the volume now 

 under notice and elsewhere considered the 

 so-called Aberrrant groups or circles, and pro- 

 ceeds to epitomize his conclusions in the follow- 

 ing manner Ip. 249). 



"The characters belonging to aberrant 

 groups, when viewed as a whole, for reasons al- 

 ready given, are too varied to admit of general 

 application, further than that they depart much 

 more from those which belong- to pre-eminent 

 types than these latter do from the subtypical. 

 It will, therefore, be necessary to consider aber- 

 rant groups as naturally divided into three 

 distinct types". 



He "for the present, names the three types 

 after groups he had recognized in ornithology 



«Linn. Trims, vol. xiv. p. 445. 



tWilson's American Omitholmrv. article Fishing Crow. 



