A BIRD’S MODERN KINSFOLK. 207 
nesting habits resembles some of the petrel forms (14— 
22) slightly. 
Having come to the heron forms by a second 
route, let us go up to the loons (18) and come again. 
Perhaps the loons are akin to the penguins (18-23) 
rather more strongly va the auks (18-21-23) than 
directly. The gull line (18-19) is fairly strong. 
Besides the ploverward and loonward ties, gulls 
are strongly akin to auks (19-21), and faintly to the 
pelican forms vza the tropic bird in this latter group, 
which is quite gull-like. A faint line, perhaps (19-22), 
should run to the petrels via the sea runners. Both 
petrels and gulls are very long winged, and stay in 
the air more than on the water. 
The affinities of the pelican forms have long puz- 
zled the students. They do not appear at a glance to 
be nearly related anywhere ; but their structure sets 
much more strongly along the heron-stork direction 
(20-15) than any other. That to the flamingoes is in 
a similar direction. This brings us again to the Heron 
group. 
Going up again, we begin at the penguins. While 
they are in shape and habit something like the other 
divers, especially the auks, it has been seriously 
doubted if they have any near modern kinsfolk. 
They stand far apart in structure and distribution, 
since they only, of the divers, center around the 
south pole. It seems not improbable that if they 
had no keels they would be placed below the ostrich 
forms—all things considered, though, the skeleton of 
the ostrich is probably more reptilian. Some auks, 
17 
