THE OREGON NATURALIST. 



me within ten paces of him and just as he 

 cleared himself from the hushes, discharged 

 about a half an ounce of dust squarely at his 

 breast. It placed him upon his back, but by 

 no means daunted him, for "right royally' did 

 he defend himself with beak and talons till I 

 was forced to end the matter with a second 

 charge of "dust" from a slightly greater dis- 

 tance. 



So it appears that one can scarcely be sure 

 what he will secure or when he will meet it, 

 and to provide for such surprises I use a fairly 

 large charge of "eights" in the right hand 

 barrel and a light charge of dusl in the left. 

 Of course if you are "stalking" any particular 

 game you should load for that alone and 

 leave any unsuspected occurrence entirely out 

 of consideration. 



Next month we will discuss some "difficul- 

 ties" occurring af'er the specimen has been 

 shot. 



PRINCIPLES OF CLASSIFICATION. 



C. C. PURDUM M.D. 



In the last paper we considered briefly the 

 reasons for classifying birds according to 

 "characters," and decided that we should not 

 be content with the mere external examination, 

 but that to make our system complete, we 

 should consider also internal "characters" and 

 varieties of structure. 



Now a"characte'-" in ornithological, and 

 indeed in entire zoological meaning and appli- 

 cation, is any point of structure which can be 

 seen, described, and used, for the purpose of 

 enabling us to distinguish one animal from 

 another. Thus, differing conditions of sternum, 

 palate; laiynx, etc. aie made use of in our 

 efforts to group together those forms which 

 most nearly correspond. But here great 

 difficulty may also be experienced: for instance; 

 a bird with a known oscine larynx, but un- 

 known as to its feet and wings, it would be 

 reasonable to suppose that these last when 



"discovered" would correspond, or present the 

 character, which had been observed to occur 

 in like cases. But ihe first bird examined, for 

 instance a lark, (Alaudida;) might, and indeed 

 would, show such a deduction to be clearly 

 and completely wrong: For although the lark 

 has an elaborate singing apparatus, and 

 distinctly characteristic larynx, still it presents 

 a tarsus far differently constituted than we 

 would expect. Instances like these overthrow 

 one of the most definite and precise axioms 

 which we have attempted to lay down with re- 

 gard to birds in general. But the failure not 

 only teaches us how great is the modification 

 of geologically recent birds from their primitive 

 ancestry, but also gives us an insight to the 

 various steps of such a modification and enables 

 us toestimate with a tolerable degree of accuracy 

 the length of time which has been required for 

 that purpose. These failures in our attempts 

 to make a few hard and fast rules to which we 

 can pin our faith, are not (as has been said) a 

 gauge of our ignorance. This would in truth 

 be so could we have all the steps of the process 

 before our eyes, for then we should be able to 

 limit no groups, for all by insensible gradations 

 would pass into one another and at last merge 

 all but insensibly into a single or at most a few 

 starting points or individual organized beings. 

 It will thus be readily seen, even though the 

 process is one which we can hardly demon- 

 strate, by personal examination during one 

 decade, that all of our present forms are in- 

 separably linked, by actual lines of evolutionary 

 processes, determined by external surrounding 

 conditions or environment. Happily however 

 for ourselves, (although the philosopher may 

 deplore the implied ignorance) degrees of 

 similaiity and dissimilarity do exist, and which if 

 correctly fathomed and sensibly compiled, 

 permit us to separate groups with ease and 

 correctness, and to build up a classification 

 which is alive to and states these various 

 gradations and works them out thoroughly and 

 completely upon the principles of Evolution. 

 (To be continued) 



