24 



ORNITHOLOGY 



L'Her- 



miiiier 



and 



Isidore 



Geoffroy 



St- 



Hilaire. 



nearly every recent authority agrees with him ; out of them, how- 

 eve] he chose the Thrushes and Warblers to stand first as his ideal 

 '■ Centrum " — a selection which, though in the opinion of the pre- 

 sent writer erroneous, is still largely followed. 



The points at issue between Cuvier and Etienne Geoffroy 

 St-Hilaire before mentioned naturally attracted the atten- 

 tion of L'Hekminiek, who in 183G presented to the French 

 Academy the results of his researches into the mode of 

 growth of that bone which in the adult Bird he had 

 already studied to such good purpose. Unfortunately the 

 full account of his diligent investigations was never 

 published. We can best judge of his labours from an 

 abstract printed in the Comptes Rendus (iii. pp. 12-20) 

 and reprinted in the Annates des Sciences Naturelles (ser. 

 2, vi. pp. 107-115), and from the report upon them by 

 Isidoee Geoffkoy St-Hilaire, to whom with others they 

 wire referred. This report is contained in the Comptes 

 Rendus for the following year (iv. pp. 565-574), and is 

 very critical in its character. It were useless to conjecture 

 why the whole memoir never appeared, as the reporter 

 recommended that it should ; but, whether, as he suggested, 

 the author's observations failed to establish the theories 

 lie advanced or not, the loss of his observations in an 

 extended form is greatly to be regretted, for no one seems 

 to have continued the investigations he began and to 

 some extent carried out; while, from his residence in 

 Guadeloupe, he had peculiar advantages in studying 

 certain types of Birds not generally available, his remarks 

 on them could not fail to be valuable, quite irrespective 

 of the interpretation he was led to put upon them. 

 L'Herminier arrived at the conclusion that, so far from 

 there being only two or three different modes by which 

 the process of ossification in the sternum is carried out, 

 the number of different modes is very considerable — 

 almost each natural group of Birds having its own. The 

 principal theory which he hence conceived himself justified 

 in propounding was that instead oijive being (as had been 

 stated) the maximum number of centres of ossification in 

 the sternum, there are no fewer than nine entering into 

 the composition of the perfect sternum of Birds in general, 

 though in every species some of these nine are wanting, 

 whatever be the condition of development at the time of 

 examination. These nine theoretical centres or " pieces " 

 L'Herminier deemed to be disposed in three transverse 

 series (rangees), namely the anterior or " prosternal, " the 

 middle or "mesosternal," and the posterior or "metasternal" 

 — each series consisting of three portions, one median piece 

 and two side-pieces. At the same time he seems, accord- 

 ing to the abstract of his memoir, to have made the some- 

 what contradictory assertion that sometimes there are 

 more than three pieces in each series, and in certain 

 groups of Birds as many as six. 1 It would occupy more 

 space than can here be allowed to give even the briefest 

 abstract of the numerous observations which follow the 

 statement of his theory and on which it professedly rests. 

 They extend to more than a score of natural groups of 

 Birds, and nearly each of them presents some peculiar 

 characters. Thus of the first series of pieces he says that 

 when all exist they may be developed simultaneously, or 

 that the two side-pieces may precede the median, or again 

 that the median may precede the side-pieces — according 

 to the group of Birds, but that the second mode is much 

 the commonest. The same variations are observable in 

 the second or middle series, but its side-pieces are said to 

 exist in all groups of Birds without exception. As to the 

 third or posterior series, when it is complete the three 

 constituent pieces are developed almost simultaneously; 



1 We shall perhaps be justified in assuming that this apparent incon- 

 si itency, and others which present themselves, would be explicable if 

 the whole memoir with the necessary illustrations had been published. 



but its median piece is said often to originate in two, 

 which soon unite, especially when the side-pieces are 

 wanting. By way of examples of L'Herminier's observa- 

 tions, what he says of the two groups that had been the 

 subject of Cuvier's and the elder Geoffroy's contest may 

 be mentioned. In the Gallinx the five well-known pieces 

 or centres of ossification are said to consist of the two 

 side-pieces of the second or middle series, and the three of 

 the posterior. On two occasions, however, there was found 

 in addition, what may be taken for a representation of 

 the first series, a little " noyau " situated between the 

 coracoids — forming the only instance of all three series 

 being present in the same Bird. As regards the Ducks, 

 L'Herminier agreed with Cuvier that there are commonly 

 only two centres of ossification — the side-pieces of the 

 middle series ; but as these grow to meet one another a 

 distinct median " noyau" also of the same series, some- 

 times appears, which soon forms a connexion with each 

 of them. In the Ostrich and its allies no trace of this 

 median centre of ossification fever occurs ; but with these 

 exceptions its existence is invariable in all other Birds. 

 Here the matter must be left ; but it is undoubtedly a 

 subject which demands further investigation, and naturally 

 any future investigator of it should consult the abstract of 

 L'Herminier's memoir and the criticisms upon it of the 

 younger Geoffroy. 



Hitherto it will have been seen that our present busi- 

 ness has lain wholly in Germany and France, for, as is 

 elsewhere explained, the chief ornithologists of Britain 

 were occupying themselves at this time in a very useless 

 way — not but that there were several distinguished men 

 in this country who were paying due heed at this time to 

 the internal structure of Birds, and some excellent descrip- 

 tive memoirs on special forms had appeared from their 

 pens, to say nothing of more than one general treatise on 

 ornithic anatomy. 2 Yet no one in Britain seems to have 

 attempted to found any scientific arrangement of Birds on 

 other than external characters until, in 1837, William Mac- 

 Macgilliveay issued the first volume of his History o/gillivray. 

 British Birds, wherein, though professing (p. 19) "not to 

 add a new system to the many already in partial use, or 

 that have passed away like their authors," he propounded 

 (pp. 1C-18) a scheme for classifying the Birds of Europe 

 at least founded on a " consideration of the digestive 

 organs, which merit special attention, on account, not so 

 much of their great importance in the economy of birds, 

 as the nervous, vascular, and other systems are not behind 

 them in this respect ; but because, exhibiting great diver- 

 sity of form and structure, in accordance with the nature 

 of the food, they are more obviously qualified to afford a 

 basis for the classification of the numerous species of 

 birds " (p. 52). Experience has again and again exposed 

 the fallacy of this last conclusion, but it is no disparag- 

 ment of its author, writing nearly fifty years ago, to say 

 that in this passage, as well as in others that might bo 

 quoted, he was greater as an anatomist than as a logician. 



2 Sir Richard Owen's celebrated article "Aves," in Todd's Cydo- 

 2>:><li,i of Anatomy and Physiology (i. pp. 265— 35S), appeared in 1836, 

 and, as giving a general view of the structure of Birds, needs no praise 

 here ; but its object was not to establish a classification, or throw light 

 especially on systematic arrangement. So far from that being the case, 

 its distinguished author was content to adopt, as he tells us, the 

 arrangement proposed by Kirby in the Seventh Bridge/water Treatise 

 (ii. pp. 445-474), being that, it is true, of an estimable zoologist, but 

 of one who had no special knowledge of Ornithology. Indeed it is, 

 as the latter says, that of Linnanis, improved by Cuvier, with an 

 additional modification of Illiger's— all these three authors having 

 totally ignored any but external characters. Yet it was regarded ''as 

 being the one which facilitates the expression of the leading anatomical 

 differences which obtain in the class of Birds, and which therefore may 

 be considered as the most natural." 



