THE OREGON NATURALIST. 75 



PRINCIPLES OF ORNITHOLOGICAL "natnial" syst -m, still in some points, branch- 



CLASSIFICATIOM. ing out on tlilferent points of structure. 



The reaction Irom the "partial" method of 



c. c. PURDUM M. D. classification has been complete. As if in- 



ternal and external parts were not reciprocal 



Every student of nature knows what a bird and mutually exponent of each other! As if a 



really is; knows its history, how it has gradunlly natural classification should not be based upon 



evolved from the lowest and can trace its re- a// points of structure, internal as well as ex- 



lation to mammals. But to the majority of ternal! But the taxonomic goal is not now to 



students of ornithology the question of classifi- find the way in which birds can be classified 



cation presents itself more as something with the least inconvenience, but to establish 



which lias been gone over thoroughly and about their ancestry — as it were — to find and prove 



which they need not bother their heads. As a their pedigree, and this would be the only 



matter of fact however, classification is the "natural classification" and becomes necessarily 



prime object of our study, and brings the science a "morphological classification" for these 



out of the chaos of a meaningless terminology, reasons. Every offspring tends to take on 



and places it upon the sound foundation of precisely the same structure as its parent and 



reality and practice. Classification strives to no outside influences bein^ imparted to it 



make an orderly disposition of fads, and to continues to "breed true" forever; but counter 



arrange them with reference to the reciprocal influences are incessantly at work in conse- 



relation of the things it knows. Classifi- quence of different surrounding conditions or 



cation presupposes that such relations do exist environment. 



and that the relations are the result of certain The plasticity of organization rendering them 



fixed inevitable laws. It is therefore a rational more or less susceptible of modification by such 



disposition of observed facts, and with regard means, and they become unlike their ancestors 



to the varieties of facts, and their arrangement, in various ways. Obviously in this manner, 



we speak of "Taxuiiomy" (or the natural degrees of likeness or unlikeness, denote with 



affinities defined and compared) and "Morphol- grater exactness the nearness or remoteness 



ogy" (or a classific.uion based entirely upon of physical kinship. Huxley has so clearly 



structure or form). It would be readily seen ^nd completely stated the "Reasons why 



then that a complete taxonomic classification Morphological Classification is Important" that 



could only be completed by having before us i can do no better in concluding this paper, 



a specimen of every kind of bird which exists than to quote his masterly words on the subject, 



and thoroughly comparing their like points and In the introduction to his "Classification of 



separating their unlike points. This is Animals" page a-"? he says. 



obviously impossible; in fact we do not know "As a matter of fact no mutual independence 



all the birds which now exist, and only a com- ^f animal forms exists in nature. On the con- 



paritively few extinct birds have been discover- n.^iy Uie members of the animal kingdom from 



ed; consequently many of our links in the the highest to the lowest are marvelously 



chain are thus quickly found to be missing and connected. Every animal has something in 

 in many cases great difficulty arises in joining common with «// its fellows; w«r/i with tnany 



the others together. of them; woa^ with a /-a', and generally so 



The result of all this has been the rearing „ituh with some that if differs but little from 



up of separate schemes of classification by them. 



different leaders in the Ornithological world, "Now a morphological classification is a 



(each having some natural advantages) and statement of these gradations of likeness which 



although depending in the main upon the old are observable in animal structures, and its 



