INTRODUCTION $1 
23-52), a brief description from Nitzsch’s pen of the peculiarities of the 
internal structure of nearly every genus is incorporated with the author’s 
prefatory remarks, as each passed under consideration, and these de- 
scriptions being almost without exception so drawn up as to be com- 
parative are accordingly of great utility to the student of classification, 
though they have been greatly neglected. Upon these descriptions he was 
still engaged till death, in 1837, put an end to his labours, when his 
place as Naumann’s assistant for the remainder of the work was taken by 
Rudolph Wagner; but, from time to time, a few more, which he had 
already completed, made their posthumous appearance in it, and, even in 
recent years, some selections from his unpublished papers have through 
the care of Giebel been presented to the public. Throughout the whole 
of this series the same marvellous industry and scrupulous accuracy are 
manifested, and attentive study of it will shew how many times Nitzsch 
anticipated the conclusions at which it took some modern taxonomers fifty 
years to arrive. Yet over and over again his determination of the affinities 
of several groups even of European Birds was disregarded ; and his labours, 
being contained in a bulky and costly work, were hardly known at all 
outside of his own country, and within it by no means appreciated so much 
as they deserved 1—for even Naumann himself, who gave them publication, 
aud was doubtless in some degree influenced by them, utterly failed to 
perceive the importance of the characters offered by the song-muscles of 
certain groups, though their peculiarities were all duly described and 
recorded by his coadjutor, as some indeed had been long before by Cuvier 
in his famous dissertation? on the organs of voice in Birds (Legons d’anat. 
comp. iv. pp. 450-491). Nitzsch’s name was subsequently dismissed by 
Cuvier without a word of praise, and in terms which would have been 
applicable to many another and inferior author, while Temminck, terming 
Naumann’s work an “ouvrage de luxe,’—it being in truth one of the 
cheapest for its contents ever published,—effectually shut it out from the 
realms of science. In Britain it seems to have been positively unknown 
until quoted some years after its completion by a catalogue-compiler on 
account of some peculiarities of nomenclature which it presented.? 
Now we must return to France, where, in 1827, L’Herminier, a creole 
of Guadeloupe and a pupil of De Blainville’s, contributed to the Actes of 
the Linnean Society of Paris for that year (vi. pp. 3-93) the ‘ Recherches 
sur l’appareil sternal des Oiseaux,’ which the precept and example of his 
master had prompted him to undertake, and Cuvier had found for him 
the means of executing. A second and considerably enlarged edition of 
this very remarkable treatise was published as a separate work in the 
following year. We have already seen that De Blainville, though fully 
persuaded of the great value of sternal features as a method of classification, 
had been compelled to fall back upon the old pedal characters so often 
1 Their value was, however, understood by Gloger, who in 1834, as will presently 
be seen, expressed his regret at not being able to use them. 
2 Cuvier’s first observations on the subject seem to have appeared in the Magazin 
Encyclopédique for 1795 (ii. pp. 330, 358). 
3 However, to this catalogue-compiler my gratitude is due, for thereby I became 
acquainted with the work and its merits, 
