70 DICTIONARY OF BIRDS 
That Dr. Cornay was on the brink of making a discovery of consider- 
able merit will by and by appear; but, with every disposition to regard 
his investigations favourably, it cannot be said that he accomplished it. 
No account need be taken of the criticism which denominated his attempt 
“unphilosophical and one-sided,” nor does it signify that his proposals 
either attracted no attention or were generally received with indifference. 
Such is commonly the fate of any deep-seated reform of classification pro- 
posed by a comparatively unknown man, unless it happen to possess some 
extraordinarily taking qualities, or be explained with an abundance of 
pictorial illustration. This was not the case here. Whatever proofs Dr. 
Cornay may have had to satisfy himself of his being on the right track, 
these proofs were not adduced in sufficient number nor arranged with 
sufficient skill to persuade a somewhat stiffmecked generation of the 
truth of his views—for it was a generation whose leaders, in France at 
any rate, looked with suspicion upon any one who professed to go beyond 
the bounds which the genius of Cuvier had been unable to overpass, and 
regarded the notion of upsetting any of the positions maintained by him 
as verging upon profanity. Moreover, Dr. Cornay’s scheme was not given 
to the world with any of those adjuncts that not merely please the eye 
but are in many cases necessary, for, though on a subject which required 
for its proper comprehension a series of plates, it made even its final 
appearance unadorned by a single explanatory figure, and in a journal, 
respectable and well-known indeed, but one not of the highest scientific 
rank. Add to all this that its author, in his summary of the practical 
results of his investigations, committed a grave sin in the eyes of rigid 
systematists by ostentatiously arranging the names of the forty types 
which he selected to prove his case wholly without order, and without 
any intimation of the greater or less affinity any one of them might bear 
to the rest. That success should attend a scheme so inconclusively 
elaborated could not be expected. 
The same year which saw the promulgation of the crude scheme just 
described, as well as the publication of the final researches of Miiller, 
witnessed also another attempt at the classification of Birds, much more 
limited indeed in scope, but, so far as it went, regarded by most orni- 
thologists of the time as almost final in its operation. Under the vague 
title of ‘Ornithologische Notizen’ Prof. Cabanis of Berlin contributed to 
the Archiv fiir Naturgeschichte (xiii. 1, pp. 186-256, 308-352) an essay in 
two parts, wherein, following the researches of Miller! on the syrinx, in 
the course of which a correlation had been shewn to exist between the 
whole or divided condition of the planta or hind part of the “ tarsus” 
(first noticed, as has been said, by Keyserling and Blasius) and the presence 
or absence of the perfect song-apparatus, the younger author found an 
agreement which seemed almost invariable in this respect, and he also 
pointed out that the planta of the different groups of Birds in which it 
is divided, is divided in different modes, the mode of division being 
generally characteristic of the group. Such a coincidence of the internal 
1 On the other hand, Miiller makes several references to the labours of Prof. 
Cabanis. The investigations of both authors must have been proceeding simultan- 
sously, and it matters little which actually appeared first. 
