£08 DICTIONARY OF BIRDS 
advantage is to reveal the existence, at so early an epoch, of Birds with 
some portion of their structure as highly organized as the highest of the 
present day, a fact witnessed by its foot, which, so far as can be judged by 
its petrified relics, might well be that of a modern Crow. The fossil 
remains of most other Birds are too imperfect to help the systematist 
much ; but the grand discoveries of Prof. Marsh, spoken of above, afford 
further hints as to the taxonomy of the Class, and their bearing deserves 
the closest consideration. 
And now to review as briefly as possible the present position of the 
taxonomy of Birds. It is allowed by almost all that Archxopteryx and its 
allies, with some of which we may reasonably hope time will make us 
acquainted, must stand alone whether by the name of Saurure or 
Archxornithes. For the rest we may, with Prof. Fiirbringer, revive Prof. 
Hickel’s designation of Ornithure, or adopt the Neornithes of Dr. Gadow ; 
but the next steps of the latter cannot be followed without misgivings. 
We should be content to wait further discoveries before assigning a definite 
place to very many fossil forms of which our knowledge is as fragmentary 
as are the specimens on which it is based. It appears impossible yet to 
correlate the Stereornithes, Diatryma, Gastornis and the rest! with recent 
forms, some of which though extinct essentially resembled many that now 
exist, and confusion can only arise from any attempt to do so. Perhaps 
it would be better if these last could be spoken of as constituting a separate 
division, for which Dr, Stejneger has somewhat unhappily appropriated Dr. 
Gill’s name Hurhipidure (page 99); but this division would have to be 
immediately subdivided into Carinatx and Ratitx, for, fully admitting 
that Prof. Fiirbringer has shewn the latter to be degenerate descendants of 
the former (page 101), it seems impossible not to recognize each as a distinct 
group. His argument in favour of the multiple origin of the Ratitz is 
hardly convincing. We can well believe that the examples he cites of 
Didus, Stringops, Cnemiornis and other modern flightless Birds are highly 
instructive as to the way in which the Ratitz have been brought into their 
present condition ; but the characters possessed by all of them in common, 
as first adduced by Huxley, and to those characters others have been 
added by Dr. Gadow, point indubitably to a single or common descent. 
Seeing that we have no knowledge of the presumed Carinate ancestors 
of the Ratitz, it might be thought:an open question which of the two 
existing branches should be first considered ; but it is evident that those 
ancestors, being the collaterals of the ancestors of the modern Carinate, 
1 While these pages are under revision for the press, a renewed investigation of 
the famous South-American fossils, most of which are now in the British Museum, 
more than justifies the view taken when I wrote the above. The results arrived at by 
Mr. Andrews and Dr, Gadow, as briefly announced by the latter (bis, 1896, pp. 586, 
587) are that Stereornithes are abolished as a taxonomic group. Phororhacos, of which 
Stereornis seems to be a synonym, is declared to belong to the “ Gruiformes,” and 
Pelecyornis and Liornis are likely to stand near it. Dryornis appears to belong to the 
“ Falconiformes,” though Mesembryornis is perhaps a forerunner of the Rheidx, and 
therefore probably Ratite. More important is the fact that the fossils are not even 
Upper Oligocene, but Miocene, and none of the forms has any relation to Gastornis. 
Recent excavation of the matrix, as Mr. Andrews has been so good as to shew me, 
proves that Phororhacos had an ossified interorbital septum, which had before been 
thought to be wanting (page 905). 
