82 SHUFELDT. (VoL. III. 
ORDER. SUB-ORDERS, FAMILIES. Includes 
Clamatores. 1. Tyrannide. Tyrant Flycatchers. 
2. Alaudide. Larks. 
3. Corvide. Crows, Jays, and Magpies. 
4. Sturnide. Starlings. 
5. Icteride. Blackbirds, Orioles, etc. 
6. Fringillide. Finches, Sparrows, etc. 
7. Tanagride. Tanagers. 
8. Hirundinide. Swallows. 
g. Ampelide. Waxwings, etc. 
Io. Laniid. Shrikes, 
: 11. Vireonidee. Vireos. 
SS SI \12. Coerebide. Honey Creepers. 
13. Mniotiltide. Wood Warblers. 
14. Motacillide. Wagtails. 
15. Cinclide. Dippers. 
16. Troglodytide. Wrens, Thrashers, ete. 
17. Certhiide. Creepers. 
18. Paride. Nuthatches and Tits. 
Ig. Sylviide. Warblers, Kinglets. Gnatcatchers. 
20. Turdide. Thrushes, Solitaires, Stonechats, 
L Bluebirds, etc. 
These Families, then, are presented in the order in which 
they appear in the A. O. U. Check-List, and as the systematists 
who compiled that work declare that “the List [is] to begin 
with the lowest or most generalized type, and end with the 
highest or most specialized” (p. 15), it is but fair to presume 
that as the families begin with the Zyvannide and conclude 
with the 7urdide, the former were considered to be the “most 
generalized types,” the latter the “most specialized,” while the 
eighteen families, serially arranged between these extremes, 
hold their several positions in recognition of this plan. 
For the past ten years the present writer has been gradually 
collecting together, in various parts of the United States and 
from various sources, osteological material illustrative of the 
group of passerine birds; so that at this writing we have before 
us a very fair representative line of such skeletons. And with 
but few exceptions, every family in the above list is in this 
way at our hand, and the missing forms are from groups, the 
species of which come to us usually only as stragglers, or 
casuals, as Sturvnus vulgaris and the Bahama Honey Creeper 
(C. bahamensts), but no others. 
