A Bird’s-Eye View 
interest to the general student. Any other 
classification than that which now monopolizes 
the term ‘‘scientific,’’ is also valid, just to the 
degree of its significance; precisely as the 
recent and popular arrangement of flowers 
according to color utterly ignores the structural 
method, and may be called extremely super- 
ficial ; still it is legitimate, interesting, and, to 
a large class of botanists, exceedingly helpful. 
All the methods of classification in the natural 
sciences being as yet tentative, it ill becomes 
the advocate of any system to arrogate exclu- 
sive validity to his own method. In the 
science of birds there are other affinities than 
those of flesh and blood, and other unities than 
those of mandibles, toes, and feathers. To the 
average observer, I am sure, the affiliations of 
the various thrushes is more interestingly be- 
trayed by their prevailing ‘‘ thrush-like tone,’’ 
than by all of their bony resemblances; and 
the most characteristic trait of all flycatchers is 
a more apparent, if a less profound, bond, than 
minutiz of organism. . 
The classification I propose is a device to 
aid the memory, rather than one that hinges on 
the subtleties of consanguinity. It is what the 
chemist might call a working formula, for those 
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