"2CzL Correspondence. [October 



birds were chiefly inaugurated and have been pursued during a time 

 while their author found himself removed by several thousand miles from 

 the libraries wherein may be consulted the works of the older anatomists. 

 Under these circumstances my guides have been the general works of 

 Owen, Huxley, Garrod. Mivart, Parker (T. J.), Forbes, and others of 

 similar standing; several of these writers have given very exhaustive 

 accounts of the myology of birds, but none of them, so far as I have been 

 able to discover, have described the muscle in question. 



This being the case I was intentionally guarded in my letter to 

 'Science' (No. 229), and said the dermo-tensor patagii "was a muscle for 

 which at this moment I recall no published description" (p. 624), and by 

 no means proclaimed it a "new discovery," although, so far as I am con- 

 cerned, it has certainly proved to be an independent observation, but I 

 fail to see that it is any the worse for that circumstance. This answers 

 the first objection to my account made by Dr. Stejneger. Secondly, he 

 charges me with "supposing that it is peculiar to the true passerine birds," 

 when I, in my letter, distinctly said that "I had investigated the matter 

 in but a limited number of birds" and would "look with interest for such 

 future researches that might be made in that direction by others" (p. 624). 



Any structural difference in such a group of vertebrates as birds is 

 always to be welcomed, and as the muscle is evidently present in some 

 and absent in others, I still maintain "that it is of taxonoiuical value," 

 perhaps of greater value than did the authorities whom Dr. Stejneger 

 pleases to quote to me, — dissectors, as a rule, who did not especially look 

 into the structure of birds with the view of determining their affinities as 

 Garrod did, and consequently would naturally not realize the importance 

 to avian classification of such a muscle, were it even a new discovery 

 to them. 



Throughout the entire second paragraph of Dr. Stejneger's letter, I am, 

 as it were, directly charged with doing Professor Garrod a "great injus- 

 tice," and "grossly misrepresenting" him, as if that were the sole aim of 

 my original description ; whereas those who may be familiar with my 

 writings in anatomy, know full weli that in the many, many instances 

 wherein 1 have been called upon to allude to his work or name, it has 

 always been with the greatest amount of regard, a regard which I ever 

 sincerely feel, and which is ever increasing as I more fully appreciate the 

 power and force of the work he was enabled to leave us in his only too 

 short career. 



The dermo-tensor patagii was entirely absent on bvth sides in the speci- 

 men of Tyrannus tyrannies which I dissected, and I even went so far as to 

 bring the dissection under a powerful microscope (one inch objective) ; 

 there was no muscular tissue present, and, as I say, further than that I 

 have not investigated the matter, nor, just now, do I intend to do so, as 

 other anatomical work is engaging my attention. 



In closing, perhaps I may be permitted to point out a few of the errors 

 which Dr. Stejneger has unfortunately allowed to creep into his letter of 

 criticism, and more especially into the figures which he published in 



