zoo DICTIONARY OF, BIRDS 
Even now ornithologists might easily invent or follow worse schemes 
than that of which the outline has just been given. It looks far more 
complicated at first sight than it will be found to be on closer inspection, 
and close inspection it thoroughly deserves ; while, granting the impossi- 
bility of forming a linear series, the result is remarkably successful. This 
is owing to the attention paid to anatomical facts, shewing to what good 
purpose Dr. Stejneger, in addition to his own investigations, has studied 
the works of ornithotomists, and also the good judgment he has, in most 
cases, exercised as to the respective value of characters, whether internal 
or external—and these last are not forgotten. Had he published his 
classification in a technical form, concisely stating the characters on 
which it was based, instead of leaving all to be collected by the reader as 
he goes, Dr. Stejneger would have simplified matters very much, and 
perhaps have saved some useless labour on the part of others ; but it will 
assuredly be counted to him for righteousness that in theory at least, if 
not always in practice, he has held to morphological principles so far as 
they had been made known. 
Unquestionably the most remarkable recent contribution to System- 
atic Ornithology is that of Prof. Fiirbringer, in the Second Volume of his 
magnificent Untersuchungen zur Morphologie und Systematek der Vogel, 
published in 1888 as a jubilee work by the well-known ‘Natura Artis 
Magistra’ Society of Amsterdam. It is impossible to exaggerate either 
the importance or the amount of the labour bestowed on these researches, 
of which the systematic results are but a comparatively small part, 
though the part that here requires most notice, for they render doubtful 
much that had before been deemed fairly-well established, and put the 
Reptilian pedigree of Birds and the position of the Ratitz in a wholly 
new light, incidentally proving the latter to be derived from ancestors 
fully endowed with wings. This last position, however, does not upset 
Prof. Marsh’s contention that the first Birds had not the faculty of flight. 
It only makes evident that between the volant forefathers of the modern 
Ratitz and the very first Birds, there intervened an indefinite but great 
number of forms of which few if any traces are known to us, and that the 
origin of Birds is far more remote than we had been inclined to suppose. 
Birds, considers Prof. Fiirbringer (op. cit. p. 1563), since they spring 
from Reptiles, must have begun with toothed forms of small or moderate 
size, with long tails and four Lizard-like feet, having distinct metacarpals 
and metatarsals, beside well-formed claws, while their bodies were clothed 
with a very primitive kind of down. These forms he terms Protoherp- 
ornithes —old Reptilian Birds (Urkriechvdgel). To them succeeded 
forms wherein the down developed into feathers, and the fore and hind 
limbs differed in build—the former becoming organs of prehension, and 
the latter the chief instruments of progression. There was a Dinosaur- 
like transformation of the legs and pelvis, with by-and-by a coalescence 
of the metatarsals, enabling the creature to become bipedal. These were 
the Protorthornithes or Prot-Aptenornithes—the first Birds that stood erect, 
or the first flightless Birds—many of considerable size, but flightless, and 
they may have left their footprints (ORNITHICHNITES, page 277) on Triassic 
rocks, and to them may have belonged (p. 1518) Laopteryx (page 280, note 
