ORNITHOL O.G Y 



21 



and almost immediately afterwards began to contribute 

 to the younger Naumann's excellent Naturgeschichte der 

 Vogel DeuUchlands, already noticed above (page 9). 

 Besides a concise general treatise on the Organization of 

 Birds to be found in the Introduction to this work (i. pp. 

 •23-.") 2), a brief description from Nitzsch's pen of the 

 peculiarities of the internal structure of nearly every genus 

 is incorporated with the author's prefatory remarks, as 

 each passed under consideration, and these descriptions 

 being almost without exception so drawn up as to be com- 

 parative are accordingly of great utility to the student of 

 classification, though they have been so greatly neglected. 

 Upon these descriptions he was still engaged till death, in 

 1837, put an end to his labours, when his place as 

 Naumann's assistant for the remainder of the work was 

 taken by Rudolph Wagner ; but, from time to time, a 

 few more, which he had already completed, made their 

 posthumous appearance in it, and, even in recent years, 

 some selections from his unpublished papers have through 

 the care of Giebel been presented to the public. Through- 

 out the whole of this series the same marvellous industry 

 and scrupulous accuracy are manifested, and attentive study 

 of it will shew how many times Nitzsch anticipated the 

 conclusions at which it has taken some modern taxonomers 

 fifty years to arrive. Yet over and over again his de- 

 termination of the affinities of several groups even of 

 European Birds was disregarded ; and his labours, being 

 contained in a bulky and costly work, were hardly known 

 at all outside of his own country, and within it by no 

 means appreciated so much as they deserved 1 — for even 

 Naumann himself, who gave them publication, and was 

 doubtless in some degree influenced by them, utterly failed 

 to perceive the importance of the characters offered by the 

 song-muscles of certain groups, though their peculiarities 

 were all duly described and recorded by his coadjutor, 

 as some indeed had been long before by Cuvier in his 

 famous dissertation 2 on the organs of voice in Birds 

 (Lecom ePanatomie comparee, iv. pp. 450-491). Nitzsch's 

 name was subsequently dismissed by Cuvier without a 

 word of praise, and in terms which would have been 

 applicable to many another and inferior author, while 

 Temminck, terming Naumann's work an " ouvragt de luxe, 

 — it being in truth one of the cheapest for its contents 

 ever published, — effectually shut it out from the realms of 

 science. In Britain it seems to have been positively 

 unknown until quoted some years after its completion by 

 a catalogue-compiler on account of some peculiarities of 

 nomenclature which it presented. 3 



Now we must return to France, where, in 1827, 

 L'Her- L'Heeminiee, a Creole of Guadaloupe and a pupil of De 

 rainier. Blainville's, contributed to the Actes of the Linnaean Society 

 of Paris for that year (vi. pp. 3-93) the " Recherches sur 

 1'appareil sternal des Oiseaux," which the precept and 

 example of his master had prompted him to undertake, 

 and Cuvier had found for him the means of executing. A 

 second and considerably enlarged edition of this very 

 remarkable treatise was published as a separate work in 

 the following year. We have already seen that De 

 Blainville, though fully persuaded of the great value of 

 sternal features as a method of classification, had been 

 compelled to fall back upon the old pedal characters so 

 often employed before ; but now the scholar had learnt to 

 excel his teacher, and not only to form an at least provi- 



1 Their value was, however, understood by Gloger, who in 1834, as 

 will presently he seen, expressed his regret at not being able to use 

 them. 



2 Cuvier's first observations on the subject seem to have appeared 

 in tin' Magazin Encyclopedicpie for 1795 (ii. pp. 330, 358). 



3 However, to this catalogue-compiler the present writer's grati- 

 tude is due, for thereby he became acquainted with the work and its 

 merits. 



sional arrangement of the various members of the I 

 based on sternal characters, but to describe these characters 

 at some length, and so give a reason for the faith that was 

 in him. There is no evidence, so far as we can sec, of 

 his having been aware of Merrem's views ; but Like thai 

 anatomist he without hesitation divided the Class into two 

 great "coupes," to which he gave, however, no other names 

 than "Oiseaux Normaux" and " Oiseaux Anomaux," — 

 exactly corresponding with his predecessor's Carinatx and 

 Eatitse — and, moreover, he had a great advantage in 

 founding these groups, since he had discovered, apparently 

 from his own investigations, that the mode .of ossification 

 in each was distinct ; for hitherto the statement of there 

 being five centres of ossification in every Bird's sternum 

 seems to have been accepted as a general truth, without 

 contradiction, whereas in the Ostrich and the Rhea, at any 

 rate, L'Herminier found that there were but two 

 primitive points, 4 and from analogy he judged that the 

 same would be the case with the Cassowary and the Emeu, 

 which, with the two forms mentioned above, made up the 

 whole of the "Oiseaux Anomaux" whose existence was 

 then generally acknowledged. 5 These are the forms which 

 composed the Family previously termed Cursores by De 

 Blainville; but L'Herminier was able to distinguish no 

 fewer than thirty-four Families of " Oiseaux Normaux," 

 and the judgment with which their separation and defini- 

 tion were effected must be deemed on the whole to be most 

 creditable to him. It is to be remarked, however, that 

 the wealth of the Paris Museum, which he enjoyed to the 

 full, placed him in a situation incomparably more favour- 

 able for arriving at results than that which was occupied 

 by Merrem, to whom many of the most remarkable forms 

 were wholly unknown, while L'Herminier had at his dis- 

 posal examples of nearly every type then known to exist. 

 But the latter used this privilege wisely and well — not, 

 after the manner of De Blainville and others subsequent 

 to him, relying solely or even chiefly on the character 

 afforded by the posterior portion of the sternum, but 

 taking also into consideration those of the anterior, as well 

 as of the in some cases still more important characters 

 presented by the pre-sternal bones, such as the furcula, 

 coracoids, and scapulae. L'Herminier thus separated the 

 Families of " Normal Birds " : — 



4 This fact in the Ostrich appears to have been known already to 

 Geoffrey St-Hilaire from his own observation in Egypt, but does not 

 seem to have been published by him. 



5 Considerable doubts were at that time, as said elsewhere (Knvr, 

 vol. xiv. p. 104), entertained in Paris as to the existence of tho 

 Apteryx. 



