72 DICTIONARY OF BIRDS 
place for it, that some groups or Families which in reality are not far 
distant from one another are distributed, owing to the dissimilarity of 
their external characters, throughout these three Orders. 
But to return to the Oscines, the arrangement of which in the 
classification now under notice has been deemed its greatest merit, and 
consequently has been very generally followed. That by virtue of the 
perfection of their vocal organs, and certain other properties—though 
some of these last have perhaps never yet been made-clear enough—they 
should stand at the head of the whole Class, may be freely admitted, but 
the respective rank assigned to the various component Families of the 
group is certainly open to question, and to the present writer seems, in 
the methods of several systematists, to be based upon a fallacy. This 
respective rank of the different Families appears to have been assigned on 
the principle that, since by reason of one character (namely, the more 
complicated structure of their syrinx) the Oscines form a higher group 
than the Clamatores, therefore all the concomitant features which the 
former possess and the latter do not must be equally indicative of 
superiority. Now one of the features in which most of the Oscines differ 
from the lower “Order” is the having a more or less undivided planta, 
and accordingly it has been assumed that the Family of Oscines in which 
this modification of the plania is carried to its extreme point must be the 
highest point of that “ Order.” Since, therefore, this extreme modification 
of the planta is exhibited by the Thrushes and their allies, it is alleged 
that they must be placed first, and indeed at the head of all Birds. The 
groundlessness of this reasoning ought to be apparent to everybody. In 
the present state of anatomy at any rate, it is impossible to prove that 
there is more than a coincidence in the facts just stated, and in the 
association of two characters—one deeply seated and affecting the whole 
life of the Bird, the other superficially, and so far as we can perceive 
without effect upon its organism. Because the Clamatores, having no 
song-muscles, have a divided planta, it cannot be logical to assume that 
among the Oscines, which possess song-muscles, such of them as have an 
undivided planta must be higher than those that have it divided. The 
argument, if it can be called an argument, is hardly one of analogy ; and 
yet no stronger ground has been occupied by those who invest the 
Thrushes, as do the majority of modern systematists, with the most 
dignified position in the whole Class. But passing from general to par- 
ticular considerations, so soon as a practical application of the principle 
is made its inefficacy is manifest. The test of perfection of the vocal 
organs must be the perfection of the notes they enable their possesson-to 
utter. There cannot be a question that, sing admirably as do some of 
the Birdsincluded among the Thrushes,! the Larks, as a Family, infinitely 
surpass them. Yet the Larks form the very group which, as elsewhere 
1 Prof. Cabanis would have strengthened his position had he included in the same 
Family with the Thrushes, which he called Rhacnemidz, the birds commonly known 
as Warblers, Sylviidx, which the more advanced of recent systematists are inclined 
with much reason to unite with the Thrushes, Zurdidx; but instead of that he, 
trusting to the plantar character, segregated the Warblers, including of course the 
Nightingale, and did not even allow them the second place in his method, putting 
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