62 DICTIONARY OF BIRDS, 
In the year last mentioned the greater part of these was separately issued 
under the title of Beitrdge zur Kenntniss der Naturgeschichte der Vogel. 
Herein the author first assigned anatomical reasons for rearranging the 
Order Anseres of Linnus, the Natatores of Illiger, who, so long before as 
1811, had proposed a new distribution of it into six Families, the defini- 
tions of which, as was his wont, he had drawn from external characters 
only. Brandt now retained very nearly the same arrangement as his 
predecessor ; but, notwithstanding that he could trust to the firmer 
foundation of internal framework, he took at least two retrograde steps. 
First he failed to see the great structural difference between the Penguins 
(which Illiger had placed as a group, Impennes, of equal rank to his other 
Families) and the Auks, Divers and Grebes, Pygopodes—combining all of 
them to form a “Typus” (to use his term) Urinatores; and secondly he 
admitted among the Natatores, though as a distinct “Typus” Podoide, 
the genera Podoa (Finroor), and Fulica (Coot), which are now 
known to be allied to the Rallide. At the same time he corrected 
the error made by Illiger in associating the PHALAROPES with 
these forms, rightly declaring their relationship to 7ringa, a point of 
order which other systematists were long in admitting. On the whole 
Brandt’s labours were of no small service in asserting the principle that 
consideration: must be paid to osteology ; for owing to his position he was 
able to gain more attention to his views than some of his less favourably 
placed brethren had succeeded in doing. 
In the same year (1839) another slight advance was made in the 
classification of the true Passeres, Keyserling and Blasius briefly pointed 
out (Arch. f. Naturgesch. v. pp. 332-334) that, while all the other Birds 
provided with perfect song-muscles had the “planta” or lind part of the 
“tarsus” covered with two long and undivided horny plates, the Larks 
had this part divided by many transverse sutures, so as to be scutellated 
behind as well as in front ; just as is the case in many of the Passerines 
which have not the singing-apparatus, and also in the Hoopor. The 
importance of this singular but superficial departure from the normal 
structure has been so needlessly exaggerated as a character that at the 
present time its value is apt to be unduly depreciated. In so large and 
so homogeneous a group as that of the true Passeres, a constant character 
of this kind is not to be despised as a practical mode of separating the 
Birds which possess it; and, more than this, it would appear that the 
discovery thus announced was the immediate means of leading to a series 
of investigations of a much more important and lasting nature—those of 
Johannes Miiller to be presently mentioned. 
Again we must recur to that indefatigable and most original in- 
vestigator Nitzsch, who, having never intermitted his study of the 
particular subject of his first contribution to science, in 1833 brought out 
at Halle, where he was Professor of Zoology, an essay with the title 
Pterylographix Avium Pars prior. It seems that this was issued as much 
with the object of inviting assistance from others in view of future 
labours, since the materials at his disposal were scanty, as with that of 
making known the results to which his researches had already led him. 
Indeed he only communicated copies of this essay to a few friends, and 
