INTRODUCTION 73 
shewn (LARK, page 511), have the planta more divided than any other 
among the Oscines. It seems hardly possible to adduce anything that 
would more conclusively demonstrate the independent nature of each of 
these characters—the complicated structure of the syrinx and the asserted 
inferior formation of the planta—which are in the Alaudidz associated 
Moreover, this same Family affords a very valid protest against the ex- 
treme value attached to the presence or absence of the outermost quill- 
feather of the wings, and in this work it is also shewn (loc. cit.) that 
almost every stage of magnitude in this feather is exhibited by the Larks 
from its almost abortive condition in Alauda to its very considerable 
development in Mirafra. Indeed there are many genera of Oscines in 
which the proportion that the outermost “ primary” bears to the rest is 
at best but a specific character, and certain exceptions are allowed by 
Prof. Cabanis (p. 313) to exist.2 Some of them it is now easy to explain, 
inasmuch as in a few cases the apparently aberrant genera have elsewhere 
found a more natural position, a contingency to which he himself was 
fully awake? But as a rule the allocation and ranking of the different 
Families of Oscines by this author must be deemed arbitrary. Yet the 
value of his Ornithologische Notizen is great, not only as evidence of his 
extensive acquaintance with different forms, which is proclaimed in every 
page, but in leading to a far fuller appreciation of characters that certainly 
should on no account be neglected, though too much importance may 
easily be, and already has been, assigned to them.* 
This will perhaps be the most convenient place to mention another 
kind of classification of Birds, which, based on a principle wholly different 
from those that have just been explained, requires a few words, though it 
has not been productive, nor is it likely, from all that appears, to be pro- 
ductive of any great effect. So long ago as 1831, Bonaparte, in his 
Saggio di una distribuzione metodica degli Animali Vertebrati, published at 
Rome, and in 1837 communicated to the Linnean Society of London, 
‘A new Systematic Arrangement of Vertebrated Animals,’ which was 
subsequently printed in that Society’s Transactions (xviii. pp. 247-304), 
though before it appeared there was issued at Bologna, under the title of 
Synopsis Vertebratorum Systematis, a Latin translation of it. Herein he 
them below the Family called by him Sylvicolidx, consisting chiefly of the American 
forms now known as Mniotiltidx#, none of which as songsters approach those of the 
Old World. 
1 It must be observed that Prof. Cabanis does not place the Alaudidz lowest of 
the seventeen Families of which he makes the .Oscines to be composed. They stand 
eleventh in order, while the Corvid# are last—a matter on which something may be 
said in the sequel. 
2 The American Family Vireonidx (VIREO) presents some notable examples, though 
there it is stated that the tenth primary is always present, but often concealed by the 
ninth (¢f. Coues, Key NV. Am. Birds, ed. 2, p. 331). 
3 By a curious error, probably of the press, the number of primaries assigned to 
the Paradiseidw and Corvide is wrong (pp. 334, 335). In each case 10 should be 
substituted for 19 and 14. 
4 A more extensive and detailed application of his method was begun by Prof. 
Cabanis in the Museum Heineanum, a useful catalogue of specimens in the collection 
of the late Oberamtmann Heine, of which the first part appeared at Halberstadt in 
1850, and the last, the work being still unfinished, in 1863. A Nomenclator of the 
same collection was printed at Berlin 1882-90 by its owner’s son and Dr, Reichenow. 
