° 1915' J Palmer, In Memoriam: Theodore Nicholas Gill. 403 



as families. Let a lesson be taken from other zoologists. There are fami- 

 lies of insects — the Carabids and Scarabeids among beetles, and the 

 Ichneumonids and Chalcidids among Hymenopters, for example — which 

 contain nearly as many as or even more species than are known of birds, 

 and yet there is no great difficulty in subordinating the constituent groups 

 under a family designation." 



Again reverting to this same subject in his address before the 

 Seventh International Zoological Congress 1 at the meeting in Bos- 

 ton in 1907, he suggested the following solution of the difficulty: 



"One consummation devoutly to be wished for is a general acceptance of 

 a standard for comparison and the use of terms with as nearly equal values 

 as the circumstances admit of. There is a great difference in the use of 

 taxonomic names for the different classes of the animal kingdom. The 

 difference is especially great between usage for the birds and that for the 

 fishes. For the former class, genera, families and orders, are based on 

 characters of a very trivial kind. . . . The mammals are a class whose 

 treatment has been mostly intermediate between that for the birds and that 

 for the fishes. Its divisions, inferior as well as comprehensive, have been 

 founded on anatomical characters to a greater extent than for any other 

 class. Its students are numerous and qualified. Mammalogy might 

 therefore well be accepted as a standard for taxonomy and the groups 

 adopted for it be imitated as nearly as the different conditions will admit. 

 The families of birds would then be much reduced in number and those of 

 fishes increased." 



These extracts have been quoted at length to indicate Gill's own 

 views and to show that his criticism of ornithological classification 

 was not directed so much against the number of divisions as the 

 exaggerated value assigned the various groups. His strongest 

 contention was to standardize the higher groups of birds so as to 

 make them more nearly equal in value with those of other verte- 

 brates. In view of his careful consideration of this question ex- 

 tending over a period of nearly forty years and his wide experience 

 with other vertebrates, his conclusions are entitled to special weight 

 however divergent they may seem to be from those now commonly 

 accepted. 



Gill's most important influence was undoubtedly the inspiration 

 of his example in the direction of broader and more thorough techni- 

 cal work. In bibliography careful and exhaustive research and 



1 Systematic Zoology. Its Progress and Purposes, sep., pp. 20-21. 



