CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE COMPARATIVE OSTE- 
OLOGY OF THE FAMILIES OF NORTH 
AMERICAN PASSERES. 
R. W. SHUFELDT, M.D., C.M.Z.S. 
Two years ago, when our Ornithologists’ Union published its 
official avifaunal List of American Birds, the Order PASSERES 
was made to contain four hundred and thirty-two (432) species 
_and sub-species,! which formidable array is therein duly divided 
and subdivided into its sub-orders, families, sub-families, genera, 
and so on. It would be far exceeding the scope of the present 
memoir to present a detailed scheme of the classification adopted 
by the Union for this extensive group of birds ; much less would 
it be appropriate for the writer to undertake to offer here a 
complete list of these forms, giving the name of each species, 
as the reader can, by a brief perusal of the work referred to, 
soon obtain a comprehensive idea of such matters. As we pro- 
pose to deal here with the osteology of the Famriies only, I 
present, as a mere matter of convenience, the ORDER below, with 
its divisions through those groups; and a glance at this scheme 
of the Order, as given, shows us that we have twenty (20) Fam- 
ilies of these North American Passeres to be taken into consid- 
eration, and it may be as well to add here that the number of 
species, however, contained in any single family or group varies 
considerably ; and we see, for example, such a family as the 
Cinclide represented by but a single species, while, on the other 
hand, such a family as the Fringilide contains upward of a 
hundred and forty species or more. 
1The Code of Nomenclature and Check-List of North American Birds adopted by 
the American Ornithologists’ Union. New York, 1886. In this work the term 
“North American,” as applied to its List of Birds, is held to include the continent of 
North America north of the present United States and Mexican boundary, as well as 
Greenland, and the peninsula of Lower California, with the islands naturally be- 
longing thereto. 
