402 Palmer, In Memoriam: Theodore Nicholas Gill. [oct. 



recognition of his eminent work in systematic zoology two birds 

 have been named in his honor by other ornithologists. These 

 are: Gill's Albatross, Diomedea gUliana, described by Dr. Coues 1 

 in 1866 (now regarded as probably the young of Diomedea melano- 

 phrys), and an extinct species of quail, Palaeotetrix gilli, described 

 by Dr. Shufeldt 2 in 1892, frOm the Pleistocene of Oregon. 



Reference has already been made to Gill's futile attempt in 1873 

 to discover structural characters of family and ordinal value. 

 Briefly stated, he considered that all living birds should be combined 

 in a single order for which he proposed the term Eurhipidura, or 

 birds with a well developed fan-like tail. Among extinct birds 

 he recognized two orders, Saururse, or birds with a reptile-like tail, 

 represented by Arch&optcryx, and Ichthyornithides represented 

 by Ichthyornis and Apatomis. These views were first embodied 

 in a paper on 'The Number of Classes of Vertebrates and their 

 Mutual Relations ' 3 presented to the National Academy of Sciences 

 at the meeting of October 29, 1873, in the year in which he was 

 elected to membership in the Academy. In contrast to these 

 views it is interesting to note that Baird, Brewer, and Ridgway in 

 1874 recognized no less than fourteen orders of Carinate birds and 

 fifty-nine families of North American Birds. 



A quarter of a century later Gill restated his views more at 

 length: 4 



"The attribution to the so-called orders of birds of that rank is a sin 

 against classification, as well as the truth, which should not be persisted 

 in ... . I would scarcely recognize any orders among living birds — cer- 

 tainly not more than two .... For provisional purposes the orders of 

 most ornithologists might be designated as suborders and the so-called 

 suborders would have about the value of superf amilies .... 



"Most of the generally admitted families of birds outside of the Passer- 

 ines appear to me to be well founded, but I cannot regard the Oscine so- 

 called families as such. ... To entitle the sections of Oscines generally 

 called families as such, is to obscure and falsify our knowledge of structure 

 and to give a distorted idea of the group .... 



"Objects should be called by their right names. If the groups in ques- 

 tion are confessed to lack family characters, they should not be designated 



iProc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Phila., May 1866, p. 181. 



2 Journ. Acad. Nat. Sci. Phila., Ser. 2 , IX. p. 415, pi. xvii, fig. 34, 1892. 



3 Am. Journ. Sci. & Arts, 3d ser., VI, pp. 432-435, Dec. 1873. 

 ♦ Osprey, III, pp. 90, 91, Feb. 1899. 



