CHAPTER VII 



NEORNITHES CAMNATAE CONCLUDED 



BKIGADE II LEGION II (CORACIOMORPIIAE CONCLUDED) 



OUDER : I'ASSESIFOKMES 



Order XIV. PASSERIFORMES. 



This Order contains ubout five thousand five hundred species, 

 being more than half the birds yet known. Their classification is 

 attended with much difficulty, and the anatomy of many more 

 forms must be investigated before anything approaching a satis- 

 factory — not to say final — scheme can be proposed. The earlier 

 taxonomers often based their systems largely on European genera, 

 and wei'e therefore oljliged to interpose others, or even to recognise 

 new Families, as their knowledge extended, among the many new 

 discoveries, to various American and Australian forms. 



The foundation of recent arrangements of the group, depending 

 on the number or position of the song-muscles, was laid between 

 1845 and 1847 by Johannes Miiller, who divided the then 

 generally accepted Order Insrssoirs into tliree tribes: (1) Oscines 

 or Polymyodi [Song-birds, or those with many (usually five or seven) 

 pairs of song-muscles] ; (2) Tracheophones [where the bronchi take 

 no part in the formation of the voice-organ] ; and (3) Picarii 

 [corresponding in the main to Nitzsch's Picariae] ; the two former of 

 which included most of the Passerine forms. Simultaneously with 

 Miiller, Cabanis proposed a system grounded on similar principles ; 

 while in 1867 Huxley recognised of his group Coracomoiyhae the 

 divisions Polymyodae, I'racheo'phonae, and Oligotnyodae [birds 

 with few song-muscles]. About ten years later Garrod, who was 

 followed between 1880 and 1882 by W. A. Forbes, divided the 

 Passeres into Desmodactyli, with a band joining the muscles of the 



