56 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIIIDS. 



Super-Order 1 1 . — I .M I'EN N ES. 



This croup, whicli, i<>r reasons given furtlier on, we here propose to treat as a 

 euperonlerequivaknt to the Dronineognathne (ostrielics, etc.) and Euornithes (inchuling 

 the rest of the living Ijinls), has suffered a curious fate under the hands of ornitholo- 

 gists. Although one of tlie most distinct and jieculiar divisions witiiin tlie lioino- 

 geneous bird-chiss, its position among tlie other groups has, until lately, been a verv 

 subordinate one. 



Linna,'us did not even recognize the penguins as a separate genus. lie ])laced one of 

 these (in-winged species together with the swift-Hying sun-birds, or trojiic-birds, wliile 

 another was ranked with the albatross. Brisson, the great contemporaneous ornithol- 

 ogist, however, niaiK' both those species types of separate genera, the latter of the 

 genus Sj>/i€Nisct<s, the former he called Catcirractex. They were sliortlv after com- 

 bined, liy Forster and Gineiin, with other sjiecies into the genus Aptcmxli/tes. 

 The efforts of Cuvier an<l the ornithologists of his age resulted in the cutting up of 

 Liniueus's 'families,' — as his 'ordines' were styled at that time, — into several 

 orders, the Natatores, among which the jiengunis had been ]ilaced, lieing divided in 

 Pinnipedes (Steganopodes), Macropteres (Longipennes), Serrirostres (Lamellirostres) 

 and Brachypteres (Pygopodes), and among the latter were jilaeed the divers, auks, 

 and penguins as genera of equal rank. A decided jirogress was made by Illiger in 

 1811, who divided the 'order' Natatores in six families, the last being the Impennes, 

 which only included the genus Aj^feiiodi/tes. But when Vigors in 18'i5 established the 

 families ending in idcp, the penguins were again included among the 'Alcidie.' 

 Bonaparte, soon after (1831), made them the ty|)es of the family Spheniscidif, a jiosi- 

 tion they held for nearly forty years without any serious challenge, as even Huxley 

 failed to recognize their true ))Osition, assigning them, as he did, a place as a 

 'family 'of eq\ial ta.xonomic value with the jilovers, cranes, gulls, etc. G.B.Gray 

 had placed the penguins Ijctween the auks and the guillemots, consequently between 

 two groups the typical species of which (the razor-billed auk, and the common guil- 

 lemot), by many ])romineiit ornithologists of the present day, are regarded as not 

 even generically distinct; but it was not before he (in 1S71) re]ieated this master- 

 piece of systematical perversity, that it became evident to all that the true relation- 

 shi]> of these I'emarkable birds had been grossly misunderstood. Nevertheless, the 

 rank of 'order' was all that could be afforded at the time, and it is not until very 

 recently that it has been set clearly forth that the penguins, notwithstanding the keel 

 on their breast-bone, are as remote from the other Carinatiu (birds with keek'<l sternum') 

 as these are from the ostriches, if not more so. 



We have discussed this point at some length because of the interesting jiarallelism 

 it jn-esents with the fate of the Struthious birds, which at times also have been treated 

 as a genus merely under different families, or orders even (Cui'sores; Otididas), until 

 the truth of their distinctness was recently acknowleilged. The assertion of Profes- 

 sor Ilu.vley, that the extinct great auk {Plaittus iiiipeimis) "shows itself to be an 

 almost intermediate form " between the penguins and the auks, for a short while pre- 

 vented the full recognition of the broad gap between the former and tlie rest of tlie 

 living birds, but recent investigations show «piite an op]iosite result. 



In 1883 Professor Watson, in the seventh volume of the Report on the Residts of 

 the Challenger E.xpeditiou, presented an excellent " Report on the Anatomy of the 



