INTRODUCTION 79 
leaving generalities apart, and restricting ourselves to what is here our 
proper business, there was possibly no branch of Zoology in which so 
many of the best informed and consequently the most advanced of its workers 
sooner accepted the principles of Evolution than Ornithology, and of 
course the effect upon its study was very marked. New spirit was given 
to it. Ornithologists now felt they had something before them that was 
really worth investigating. Questions of Affinity, and the details of 
Geographical Distribution, were endowed with a real interest, in comparison 
with which any interest that had hitherto been taken was a trifling pastime. 
Classification assumed a wholly different aspect. It had up to this time 
been little more than the shuffling of cards, the ingenious arrangement of 
counters in a pretty pattern. Henceforward it was to be the serious study 
of the workings of Nature in producing the beings we see around us from 
beings more or less unlike them, that had existed in bygone ages and had 
been the parents of a varied and varying offspring—our fellow-creatures 
of to-day. Classification for the first time was something more than the 
expression of a fancy, not that it had not also its imaginative side. Men 
began to figure to themselves the original type of some well-marked genus 
or Family of Birds. They could even discern dimly some generalized 
stock whence had descended whole groups that now differed strangely in 
habits and appearance—their discernment aided, may be, by some isolated 
form which yet retained undeniable traces of a primitive structure. More 
dimly still visions of what the first Bird may have been like could be 
reasonably entertained ; and, passing even to a higher antiquity, the 
Reptilian parent whence all Birds have sprung was brought within reach 
of man’s consciousness. But relieved as it may be by reflexions of this 
kind—dreams some may perhaps still call them—the study of Ornithology 
has unquestionably become harder and more serious ; and a corresponding 
change in the style of investigation, followed in the works that remain to 
be considered, will be immediately perceptible. 
That this was the case is undeniably shewn by some remarks of Canon 
-Tristram, who, in treating of the Alaudide and Saaxicoline of Algeria 
(whence he had recently brought a large collection of specimens of his 
own making), stated (Ibis, 1859, pp. 429-433) that he could “not help 
feeling convinced of the truth of the views set forth by Messrs. Darwin 
and Wallace,” adding that it was “hardly possible, I should think, to 
“illustrate this theory better than by the Larks and Chats of North Africa.” 
It is unnecessary to continue the quotation ; the few words just cited are 
enough to assure to their author the credit of being (so far as is known) 
the first ornithological specialist who had the courage publicly to 
recognize and receive the new and at the time unpopular philosophy! But 
greater work was at hand. In June 1860 the late Prof. W. K. Parker 
broke, as most will allow, entirely fresh ground, and ground that during 
his life he continued to till more deeply perhaps than any other man by 
communicating to the Zoological Society a memoir ‘On the Osteology of 
Balxniceps’ (SHOFBILL), subsequently published in that Society’s Transactions 
(iv. pp. 269-351). Of this contribution to science, as of all the rest which 
1 Whether Canon Tristram was anticipated in any other, and if so in what, branch 
of Zoology will be a pleasing enquiry for the historian of the future. 
