22 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 1 39 



and indicates that this is the procedure that is gaining in acceptance 

 in parts of the world other than America. 



The former family Melithreptidae becomes the family Melipha- 

 gidae, since the name of the type genus is now accepted as Meliphaga 

 Lewin, 1808. 



In a similar way the family Compsothlypidae for the wood warblers 

 becomes the family Parulidae, since the former Compsothlypis 

 Cabanis, 185 1, is replaced by the older Parula Bonaparte, described 

 in 1838. 



The order of arrangement in the Passeriformes as said above is in 

 part necessarily arbitrary, through the easily perceptible and often- 

 remarked fact that we are required to list the groups in linear order in 

 a two-dimensional alignment when actually they stand in three-dimen- 

 sional relationship to one another. A further element that may be re- 

 garded almost as a fourth dimension is found in some of the extinct 

 groups known only as fossils that have no close relatives alive today. 

 The sequence in the following pages is the one that best represents my 

 present understanding, based on personal studies over a period of 

 more than 50 years. I continue to place the Fringillidae at the end of 

 the list, because of my feeling that this group is the modern expres- 

 sion of a main core or stem that through the earlier Tertiary periods 

 has given rise to more specialized assemblages that we now recognize 

 as distinct families. Further specialization is apparent in some parts 

 of the existing fringilline assemblage that, if undisturbed, may lead 

 to further differentiation, should these variants be able to persist for 

 the necessary millenniums in our rapidly changing world. Adjacent 

 to the Fringillidae I place the other groups that obviously are closely 

 allied to them. Attempts to arrange the avian families with the Cor- 

 vidae and their allies in the terminal position, because of supposed 

 more advanced development of the brain, appear to me quite uncertain, 

 particularly in view of our decidedly limited information in this field. 

 Should this idea be coupled with belief in superior mental reactions 

 in the corvine assemblage, I would consider this more an anthropo- 

 morphic interpretation than one supported by scientific fact. 



In the formation of group names the suffixes -idae and -inae for 

 families and subfamilies are accepted rather universally so that they 

 do not require examination. In view of the limited number of species 

 covered in ornithology I see no point in the introduction of tribes as 

 another category between the subfamily and the genus. This may be 

 useful to entomologists with their tens of thousands of species but 

 seems unnecessary and cumbersome with birds. In some of the more 

 comprehensive avian genera there are groups of species more closely 



