INTRODUCTION 89 
uniformly and persistently protested against the inside being better than 
the outside. In thus acting he proved himself a true follower of his 
great countryman Linnzus ; but, without disparagement of his efforts in 
this respect, it must be said that when internal and external characters 
appeared to be in conflict he gave, perhaps with unconscious bias, a 
preference to the latter, for he belonged to a school of zoologists whose 
natural instinct was to believe that such a conflict always existed. Hence 
his efforts, praiseworthy as they were from several points of view, and 
particularly so in regard to some details, failed to satisfy the philosophic 
taxonomer when generalizations and deeper principles were concerned, and 
in his practice in respect to certain technicalities of classification he was, in 
the eyes of the orthodox, a transgressor. Thus instead of contenting him- 
self with terms that had met with pretty general approval, such as Class, 
Subclass, Order, Suborder, Family, Subfamily and so on, he introduced 
into his final scheme other designations, ‘‘ Agmen,” ‘‘ Cohors,” “ Phalanx” 
and the like, which to the ordinary student of Ornithology convey an 
indefinite meaning, if any meaning at all. He also carried to a very 
extreme limit his views of nomenclature, which were certainly not in 
accordance with those held by most zoologists, though this is a matter so 
trifling as to need no details in illustration. It is by no means easy to 
set forth briefly, and at the same time intelligibly, to any but experts, 
the final scheme of Sundevall, owing to the number of new names intro- 
duced by him, and there is no need here to make the attempt, for experts 
would rather consult the work itself or the English version of it.! Praised 
in various quarters as Sundevall’s perfected System was on its appearance, 
the present writer felt from the first that it would speedily be seen to 
what little purpose so many able men had laboured if arrangement and 
grouping so manifestly artificial—the latter often of forms possessing no 
real affinity—could pass as a natural method. He was not so sanguine as 
to hope that it might be the last of its kind, though any one accustomed 
to look deeper than the surface must have seen its numerous defects, and 
almost every one, whether so accustomed or not, ought by its means to be 
brought to the conclusion that, when a man of Sundevall’s knowledge 
and experience could not, by trusting only to external characters, do 
better than this, the most convincing proof is afforded of the inability of 
external characters alone to produce anything save ataxy. The principal 
merits it possesses are confined to the minor arrangement of some of the 
Oscines ; but even here many of the alliances, such, for instance, as that 
of Pitta with the true Thrushes, are indefensible on any rational grounds, 
and some, as that of Accentor with the Weaver-birds, verge upon the 
ridiculous, while on the other hand the interpolation of the American 
Warblers, Mniotiltidx, between the normal Warblers of the Old World 
and the Thrushes is as bad—especially when the genus Mniotilta is placed, 
notwithstanding its different wing-formula, with the Tree-creepers, Certhtide. 
The whole work unfortunately betrays throughout an utter want of the 
sense of proportion, In many of the large groups very slight differences 
are allowed to keep the forms exhibiting them widely apart, while in 
1 Sundevall’s Tentamen. Translated into English with Notes, by Francis 
Nicholson. London: 1889. 
