222 THE STORY OF BIRD-LIFE. 



group, the difficulty is to throw back far enough 

 to find the branch from which they sprang. 



We now come to the last group of all, namely, 

 the passeres, as they are called. To this belong 

 our song-birds and the majority of our cage- 

 birds ; the swallows and martins, flycatchers, 

 tit-mice and nut-hatches, and so on. The proud 

 position of the head of the house is accorded 

 to the crows, by consent of the majority of 

 naturalists. Some would replace them by the 

 thrushes, others by the larks. 



Into the respective merits of the various 

 claimants we need not go here. They Avill 

 be found discussed elsewhere. 



Outlying members of this passerine group are 

 the lyre-birds and scrub-birds of Australia, and 

 the broad-bills of the Indo-Malayan countries. 

 The points which exclude these from the con- 

 fines of the main group are concerned with the 

 voice muscles and on this account are of too 

 technical a character to be discussed here. 



The grouping together of the different kinds 

 of birds according to what w^e believe to be their 

 natural relationships constitutes what w^e call 

 the classification of birds. 



We might summarise this chapter as follows. 

 Birds may be divided into two main divisions : — 



1. Lizard-tailed, including, at present, archse- 

 opteryx only. 



2. Bird-tailed, including the remainder of 

 the class. This last must be again sub- 

 divided into many smaller groups, though 

 how to separate them without violence is 

 not easy. 



