gS DICTIONARY OF B/7eDS 
The most novel feature, and one the importance of which most 
ornithologists of the present day are fully prepared to admit, is of course 
the separation of the Class Aves into two great Divisions, which from one 
of the most obvious distinctions they present were called by its author 
Carinate1 and Ratitx,? according as the sternum possesses a keel or not. 
But Merrem, who subsequently communicated to the Academy of Berlin 
a more detailed memoir on the “ flat-breasted” Birds,? was careful not 
here to rest his Divisions on the presence or absence of their sternal 
character alone. He concisely cites (p. 238) no fewer than eight other 
characters of more or less value as peculiar to the Carinate Division, the . 
first of which is that the feathers have their barbs furnished with hooks, 
in consequence of which the barbs, including those of the wing-quills, 
cling closely together; while among the rest may be mentioned the 
position of the furcula and coracoids,* which keep the wing-bones apart ; 
the limitation of the number of the lumbar vertebre to fifteen, and of the 
carpals to two; as well as the divergent direction of the iliac bones,—the 
corresponding characters peculiar to the Ratite Division being (p. 259) 
the disconnected condition of the barbs of the feathers, through the 
absence of any hooks whereby they might cohere ; the non-existence of 
the furcula, and the coalescence of the coracoids with the scapulz (or, as 
he expressed it, the extension of the scapule to supply the place of the 
coracoids, which he thought were wanting); the lumbar vertebre being 
twenty and the carpals three in number ; and the parallelism of the iliac 
bones. 
As for Merrem’s partitioning of the inferior groups there is less to be 
said in its praise as a whole, though credit must be given to his anatomical 
knowledge for leading him to the perception of several affinities, as well 
as differences, that had never before been suggested by superficial 
systematists. But it must be confessed that (chiefly, no doubt, from 
paucity of accessible material) he overlooked many points, both of alliance 
and the opposite, which since his time have gradually come to be 
admitted. For instance, he seems not to have been aware of the dis- 
tinction, already shewn by Nitzsch (as above mentioned) to exist, between 
the Swallows and the Swifts; and, by putting the genus Coracias among his 
Oscines Tenutrostres® without any remark, proved that he was not in all 
respects greatly in advance of his age; but on the other hand he most 
righteously judged that some species hitherto referred to the genera 
Certhia and Upupa required removal to other positions, and it is much to 
dare not, however, assign a place, for instance, Buceros, Hamatopus, Merops, 
Glareola (Brisson’s genus, by the way) and Palamedea. 
1 From carina, a keel. 
2 From ratis, a raft or flat-bottomed barge. 
* “Beschreibung der Gerippes eines Casuars nebst einigen beiliufigen Bemer- 
kungen tiber die flachbriistigen Vogel.” — Abhandl. der Berlin. Akademie, Phys. 
Klasse, 1817, pp. 179-198, tabb. i.-iii. 
* Merrem, as did many others in his time, calls the coracorns “clavicule”’ ; but 
it is now well understood that in Birds the real clavicule form the FURCULA. 
° He also placed the genus 7odus in the same group, but it must be borne in mind 
that in his time a great many Birds were referred to that genus which certainly do 
not belong to it, and it-may well have been that he never had the opportunity of 
examining a specimen of the genus as nowadays restricted. 
