144 Zoological Society :— 
Dec. 8, 1863.—E. W. H. Holdsworth, Esq,, F.Z.S., in the Chair. 
On THE SysreMATIC PosITION OF THE CRESTED SCREAMER 
(PALAMEDEA CHAvARIA). By W. K. Parker. 
Many years ago, at a time when the only collection of foreign 
living creatures seen by me was contained in Wombwell’s travelling 
menagerie, my observations on the structure of birds were necessa- 
rily confined, for the most part, to our native species. I am glad of 
this now, as they are nearly all of pure types; and from childhood 
their life and conversation yielded me a pleasure nearly equal to that 
derived from communion with bipeds of the plumeless kind. 
If the structure of the pure or unmixed types had not been stu- 
died by me first in such a way as to make the most definite mind- 
images, there would have been for me no good firm ground to stand 
upon whilst contemplating the structure and relationships of such 
birds as the Trumpeter (Psophia), the Cariama (Dicholophus), and 
the Palamedea. Any study, however, of the Bird class which should 
go no further than its own border-line would be fruitful in bringing 
to light difficulties and even paradoxes: a physiologist might as 
well study the functions of one class of organs to the total neglect of 
the rest of the body, the beautiful whole. I have for some time 
past held to the belief that the birds should not be termed a class, 
as though they formed a group equal to that of the Mammalia; I 
find that Professor Huxley holds the same views. 
If that is the case, we have some explanation of the great unifor- 
mity of the feathered tribes ; for it is a fact that the remotest forms 
in the group are really not far apart in nature, and the smaller groups 
are closely intertwined one amongst another. 
There are two principal conditions of nearness to the Reptilia in 
the great Bird group: first the combination of mammalian and of 
reptilian characters with what is truly ornithic, as in the Ostriches ; 
and the second is when the aberrant characters are only reptilian, 
and for the most part lacertian*. 
Now it is with /acertian characters, rather than with what we find 
in the Crocodile and the Chelonian, that we have to deal in such birds 
as the Palamedea and other mixed forms which are not far from it in 
actual nature, but are striving, as it were, to attain to the full typical- 
ness of other groups than that to which the Palamedea really belongs. 
The discovery of such a marvellous creature as Von Meyer’s dr- 
cheopteryx must of necessity give the scientific mind a thirsty long- 
ing to know more of the relations, and of the true causes of the rela- 
tions, of these mid vertebrates, the reptiles and birds,—cold-blooded, 
scaly, slow, and often loathsome on one hand; on the other warm, 
intensely active, and endued with the highest locomotive powers, and 
beautiful beyond the power of words to express. 
There are two very beautiful groups of birds, rich in species, with 
very clearly defined characters, both standing at about the same 
* The skull of every bird known conforms, on the whole, not so much to the 
crocodilian as to the lacertian type; their horny jaw-sheaths, large symmetrical 
sternum, and almost fixed ribs are chelonian in their nature. 
