232 On the 1^ or th- American Kites. 



Concluding Remarks. 



Some very extraordinary classification has been adopted 

 by American ornithologists for the four different kinds of 

 Kites in the United- States avifauna. The official ' Check- 

 List^ of the American Ornithologists^ Union groups them as 

 so many genera along with the Buzzards, Hawks, Goshawks, 

 and Eagles, without any special dividing line. Ridgway has 

 also adopted this arrangement. Coues, in his ' Key/ makes 

 a subfamily for them, Milvinse, which is much better, though 

 his definition for the same is very faulty. I have never had 

 the opportunity of examining any of the genus Milvus, but 

 the last-named author believes it stands near our Elanoides. 



Further, it is the opinion of the present writer that we shall 

 not be enabled to define, with any degree of accuracy, the 

 position in the system of any of these birds until we are in 

 possession of a far more exact knowledge of the morphology 

 of the entire group to which they belong. Provisionally they 

 ought at least to constitute a Family, thus : — 



Family. Subfamilies. 



/ IctiniiniB. 



\ Elanoidinse. 



MlLVID^ ^ „, . . 



) Elaninse. 



V Rostrliaminse (?), uot examined. 



It means something that Elanoides should have so many 

 osteological characters in common with Pandion, and such 

 important ones. Not that Pandion and Elanoides forficatus 

 belong together, but simply that it points to something the 

 hidden meaning of which is not as yet in our possession. It 

 means something else that nearly all the osteological cha- 

 racters of Ictinia are so strictly Buteonine and so utterly 

 diflerent from the corresponding ones of Elanoides. 

 Finally, it surely means something more that the non-des- 

 mognathous Elanus leucurus presents an entirely different 

 set of osteological characters from both the first two men- 

 tioned Kites, and that a set which, in our present state 

 of knowledge of the subject, leaves us very much in doubt as 

 to its true affinities. 



We stand in need of a little more light along the lines 

 indicated, and such a task will well repay the ornithotomist. 



