ON THE PROGRESS AND PRESENT STATE OP ORNITHOLOGY. 217 



ITALY: — Public. — Turin; Pavia; Parma; Bologna; Florence; Rome (Aca- 

 demia della Sapienza) ; Genoa; Nice; Pisa; Naples. 



Private. — Prince nf Canino, Rome ; Prince Aldobrandini, Frascati ; Marchese 

 Costa, Chambery ; Marchese Breme, Turin ; Signor Passerini, Florence ; C. Du- 

 razzo, Genoa ; Count Contarini, Venice ; Contessa Borgia, Velletri ; Signor Ante- 

 nori, Perugia ; Signor Costa, Naples. 



SPAIN :— Public— Madrid ; Gibraltar. 



IONIAN ISLANDS:— Public— Corfu. 



GREECE :— Public— Athens. 



MALTA : — Private. — Signor Schembri. 



NORTH AMERICA :— Public— Montreal ; Cambridge; Salem; Philadelphia 

 (1. Academy of Sciences; 2. Peale's Museum) ; Charleston; New York ; Mexico. 



Private. — Signor Constancia, Guatemala. 



AFRICA :— Public— Cape Town. 



INDIA :— Public— Calcutta. 



Private. — T. C. Jerdon, Nellore. 



AUSTRALIA :— Public— Sydney ; Hobart Town. 



In connexion with Museums, the subject of Taxidermy may be briefly 

 noticed. Although in acquiring the somewhat difficult art of preparing the 

 skins of birds for collections, practice is far more important than precept, 

 yet useful hints may often be obtained from the treatises which have been 

 published on the subject. Among the best of these may be mentioned Mrs. 

 Lee's ' Taxidermy,' Swainson's ' Taxidermy ' in ' Lardner's Cycloptedia,' 

 Waterton's ' Wanderings,' and his ' Essays in Natural History,' Boitard's 

 * Manuel du Naturaliste Preparateur,' Brehm's ' Kunst Vogel als Balge zu- 

 bereiten,' &c., Weimar, and Kaup's ' Classification der Saugthiere und Vogel,' 

 Darmstadt, 1844. 



Ornithological Libraries. — It is needless to enumerate all the scientific li- 

 braries in which the subject of ornithology is adequately represented, espe- 

 cially as the museums above-mentioned are in most cases accompanied with 

 appropriate collections of books. Of libraries unconnected with museums I 

 may notice, as especially useful to the ornithological student, the Radcliffe 

 at Oxford, the Eoyal Societies of London and of Edinburgh, and the fine 

 collection of zoological works formed by Mr. Grut of Edinburgh, to whom I 

 am indebted for access to several rare works. 



9. Desiderata of Ornithology. 



Having now given an account of the recent progress and present state of 

 Ornithology, I will conclude with pointing out the desiderata of the science, 

 showing the deficiencies which require to be supplied in order to refine the 

 crude mass of knowledge already extracted from the mine, and to make fur- 

 ther researches into the storehouses of Nature. 



1. There is a great want of increased precision and uniformity in the value 

 of the genera, and of the superior groups which various authors have intro- 

 duced into ornithology. All groups of the same rank are supposed in theory 

 to possess characters of the same value or amount of importance, and the 

 object of the naturalist should be to bring them as nearly as possible to this 

 state of equality. It must indeed be admitted, that no certain test seems to 

 have been yet discovered for weighing the value of zoological characters. 

 The importance of the same character manifestly varies in diflerent depart- 

 ments of nature, and must therefore be estimated by moral rather than by 

 demonstrative evidence. The real test of the value of a structural character 

 ought to be its influence on the economy of the living animal, but here we 

 too often have to lament our ignorance or our false inductions, and in many 

 cases we are wholly unable to detect the relations between structure and 



