68 DICTIONARY OF BIRDS 
his first and second “Tribes” ; but the third is an assemblage still more 
heterogeneous than that which Nitzsch brought together under a name so 
like that of Miiller—for the fact must never be allowed to go out of 
sight that the extent of the Picarit of the latter is not at all that of the 
Picarix of the former! For instance, Miiller places in his third “ Tribe” 
the group which he called Ampelidx, meaning thereby the peculiar forms 
of South America that are now considered to be more properly named 
Cotingide (CHATTERER), and herein he was clearly right, while Nitzsch, 
who, misled by their supposed affinity to the genus Ampelis (WAxwINa)— 
peculiar to the Northern Hemisphere, and a purely Passerine form, had 
kept them among his Passerinx, was as clearly wrong. But again Miiller 
made his third “ Tribe” Picarw also to contain the Tyrannidx, of which 
mention has just been made, though it is so obvious as now to be 
generally admitted that they have no very intimate relationship to the 
other Families with which they are there associated. There is no need here 
to criticize more minutely his projected arrangement, and it must be said 
that, notwithstanding his researches, he seems to have had some mis- 
givings that, after all, the separation of the Jnsessores into those “ Tribes ” 
might not be justifiable. At any rate he wavered in his estimate of their 
taxonomic value, for he gave an alternative proposal, arranging all the 
genera in a single series, a proceeding in those days thought not only 
defensible and possible, but desirable or even requisite, though now 
utterly abandoned, Just as Nitzsch had laboured under the disadvantage 
of never having any example of the abnormal Passeres of the New World 
to dissect, and therefore was wholly ignorant of their abnormality, so 
Miiller never succeeded in getting hold of an example of the genus Pitta - 
for the same purpose, and yet, acting on the clew furnished by Keyserling 
and Blasius, he did not hesitate to predict that it would be found to fill 
one of the gaps he had to leave, and this to some extent it has been since 
proved to do. The result of all this is that the Oscines or true Passeres 
are found to be a group in which the vocal organs not only attain the 
greatest perfection, but are nearly if not quite as uniform in their structure 
as in the sternal apparatus; while at the same time each set of characters 
is wholly unlike that which exists in any other group of Birds, as is set 
forth in Dr. Gadow’s article Syrtnx in the text. 
It must not be supposed that the muscles just defined were first dis- 
covered by Miiller; on the contrary they had been described long before, 
and by many writers on the anatomy of Birds. To say nothing of 
foreigners, or the authors of general works on the subject, an excellent 
account of them had been given by Yarrell in 1829 (Trans. Linn. Soe. 
Xvi. pp. 305-321, pls. 17, 18), an abstract of which was subsequently 
given in the article “Raven” in his History of British Birds, and Mac- 
gillivray also described and figured them with the greatest accuracy ten 
years later in his work with the same title (ii. pp. 21-37, pls. x.-xii.), 
while Blyth and Nitzsch had (as already mentioned) seen some of their 
value in classification. But Miiller has the merit of elearly outstriding 
his predecessors, and with his accustomed perspicacity made the way even 
1 It is not needless to point out this fine distinction, for more than one modern 
author would seem to have overlooked it. 
