58 DICTIONARY OF BIRDS 
authority agrees with him; out of them, however, he chose the Thrushes 
and Warblers to stand first as his ideal “ Centrum ”—a selection which, 
though in the opinion of the present writer erroneous, is still widely 
followed. ; 
The points at issue between Cuvier and Etienne Geoffroy St- 
Hilaire before mentioned naturally attracted the attention of L’Her- 
minier, who in 1836 presented to the French Academy the results of 
his researches into the mode of growth of that bone which in the adult 
Bird he had already studied to such good purpose. Unfortunately the 
full account of his diligent investigations was never published. We can 
only judge of his labours from an abstract (Comptes Rendus, iii. pp. 12-20, 
and Ann. Sct. Nag. ser. 2, vi. pp. 107-115), and from the report upon them 
by Isidore Geoffroy St.-Hilaire (Comptes Rendus, iv. pp. 565-574), to 
whom with others they were referred, and which is very critical in its 
character. It were useless to conjecture why the whole memoir never 
appeared, as the reporter recommended that it should ; but, whether, as 
he suggested, the author’s observations failed to establish the theories he 
advanced or not, the loss of his observations in an extended form is 
greatly to be regretted, for no one seems to have continued the investi- 
gations he began and to some extent carried out ; while, from his resi- 
dence in Guadeloupe, he had peculiar advantages in studying certain 
types of Birds not generally available, his remarks on them could not 
fail to be valuable, quite irrespective of the interpretation he was led to 
put upon them, L’Herminier arrived at the conclusion that, so far 
from there being only two or three different modes by which the process 
of ossification in the sternum is carried out, the number of different 
modes is very considerable—almost each natural group of Birds having 
its own, The principal theory which he hence conceived himself 
justified in propounding was that instead of five being (as had been 
stated) the maximum number of centres of ossification in the sternum, 
there are no fewer than nine entering into the composition of the perfect 
sternum of Birds in general, though in every species some of these nine 
are wanting, whatever be the condition of development at the time of 
examination. These nine theoretical centres or ‘‘ pieces” L’Herminier 
deemed to be disposed in three transverse ranks (rangés), namely the 
anterior or “prosternal,” the middle or “ mesosternal,” and the posterior 
“metasternal”—each rank consisting of three portions, one median 
piece and two side-pieces. At the same time he seems, according to the 
abstract of his memoir, to have made the somewhat contradictory asser- 
tion that sometimes there are more than three pieces in each rank, and 
in certain groups of Birds as many as six.! 
1 We shall perhaps be justified in assuming that this apparent inconsistency, and 
others which present themselves, would be explicable if the whole memoir with the 
necessary illustrations had been published. It would occupy more space than can 
here be allowed to give even the briefest abstract of the numerous observations which 
follow the statement of his theory and on which it professedly rests. They extend 
to more than a score of natural groups of Birds, and nearly each of them presents 
some peculiar characters. Thus of the first rank of pieces he says that when all 
exist they may be developed simultaneously, or that the two side-pieces may precede 
the median, or again that the median may precede the side-pieces—according to the 
