By the Rev. A. C. Smith. 107 
place, but beginning with the noblest of God’s creatures, with man, 
we can pass gradually through all the animal kingdom, stopping to 
admire with what excellent method, and by what almost insensible 
degrees, the race of quadrupeds merges into that of birds; how the 
race of birds is intimately connected with fishes; fishes with rep- 
tiles; reptiles with insects; insects with animals of inferior order, 
and these again with the vegetable, and (as some affirm) even the 
mineral kingdom. These are surely wondrous facts and of ex- 
ceeding interest: to follow up and pursue this chain requires time 
indeed, and skill, and opportunities, such as few can command: but 
to gain an insight into this beautiful order and arrangement is 
within the reach of all, and the more we investigate it, the more 
we shall learn how true it is of the Almighty Creator, that “God 
is not the author of confusion, but of peace.” 
Before I proceed to examine in detail the modern method of 
classifying birds, as generally adopted at the present day, it will 
be well briefly to observe the several stages by which it has arrived 
at its present excellence. Among ancient writers on Natural 
History, there are but two, viz. Aristotle and Pliny, who have 
professed to give any general description of birds; and interesting, 
and in some cases instructive, as their treatises in many respects 
certainly are, they are mixed up with such a mass of absurdity and 
fable as very much to mar their intrinsic value. In that early stage 
of Ornithological knowledge, of course anything approximating to 
systematic arrangement was not to be expected. But to come 
down to more modern times, the first approach to order is traced to 
Belon and the French naturalists, who in the middle of the six- 
teenth century began to classify after a certain system: As the 
ground work of their scheme was however derived from the habitat 
and food of birds, it was necessarily in many respects very incorrect. 
In the next century, Gesner at Zurich, and Aldrovandus at Bologna, 
struck out a plan in the right direction, by dividing the whole 
class into /and and water birds; but then, as if satisfied with this 
good beginning, they deduced their subordinate divisions from the 
nature of the aliment. It was reserved for our own countryman, 
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