INTRODUCTION Ti 
and external features of Birds was naturally deemed a discovery of great 
value by those ornithologists who thought most highly of the latter, and 
it was unquestionably of no little practical utility. Further examination 
also revealed the fact! that in certain groups the number of “ primaries,” 
or quill-feathers growing from the manus of the wing, formed another 
characteristic easy of observation. In the Oscines or Polymyodi of Miiller 
the number was either nine or ten—and if the latter the outermost of 
them was generally very small. In two of the other groups of which 
Prof. Cabanis especially treated—groups which had been hitherto more or 
less confounded with the Oscines—the number of primaries was invari- 
ably ten, and the outermost of them was comparatively large. This 
observation was also hailed as the discovery of a fact of extraordinary 
importance ; and, from the results of these investigations taken altogether, 
Ornithology was declared by Sundevall, undoubtedly a man who had a 
right to speak with authority, to have made greater progress than had been 
achieved since the days of Cuvier. The final disposition of the ‘‘Sub- 
class Insessores”—all the perching birds, that is to say, which are neither 
Birds-of-Prey nor Pigeons—proposed by Prof. Cabanis, was into four 
“Orders,” as follows :— 
1. Oscines, equal to Miiller’s group of the same name. 
2. Clamatores, being a majority of that division of the Picarix of 
Nitzsch, so called by Andreas Wagner, in 1841,? which have their feet 
normally constructed. 
3. Strisores, a group now separated from the Clamatores of Wagner, 
and containing those forms which have their feet abnormally constructed ; 
and 
4. Scansores, being the Grimpeurs of Cuvier, the Zygodactyli of several 
other systematists. 
The first of these four “Orders” had been already indefeasibly estab- 
lished as one perfectly natural, but respecting its details more must pre- 
sently be said. The remaining three are now seen to be artificial associa- 
tions, and the second of them, Clamatores, in particular, containing a very 
heterogeneous assemblage of forms; but it must be borne in mind that 
the internal structure of some of them was at that time still more imper- 
fectly known than now. Yet even then, enough had been ascertained to 
have saved what are now recognized as the Families Todidx and Tyran- 
nidex from being placed as ‘‘ Subfamilies” in the same ‘‘ Family Colopteridx” ; 
and several other instances of unharmonious combination in this “ Order” 
might be adduced were it worth while to particularize them. More than 
that, it would not be difficult to shew, only the present is not exactly the 
1 This seems to have been made known by Prof. Cabanis the preceding year to 
the ‘Gesellschaft der Naturforschender Freunde’ (cf. Miiller, Stimmorgane der Pas- 
serinen, p. 65). Of course the variation to which the number of primaries was 
subject had not escaped the observation of Nitzsch, but he had scarcely used it as a 
classificatory character. 
2 Archiv fiir Naturgeschichte, vii. 2, pp. 98, 94. The division seems to have 
been instituted by this author a couple of years earlier in the second edition of his 
Handbuch der Naturgeschichte (which I have not seen), but not then to have received 
a scientific name. It included all Picariw which had not “zygodactylous” feet, that 
is to say, toes placed in pairs, two before and two behind. 
. 
