380 Recently published Ornithological Works. 



ingenious way. The characters having been shortly stated, a 

 tabular list of the 36 " suborders " is appended, and it is 

 shown in which of them each of the several selected charac- 

 ters occurs and in which of them it is absent. Thus it is 

 seen at a glance that the " suborder " under consideration is 

 the only one of the set of thirty-six that combines the whole 

 of the selected characters, though many other " suborders " 

 may possess one or more of them. 



The principal characters taken by Mr. Seebohm as the 

 base of his System are : — (1) The condition of the young at 

 birth (to which very special importance was attached by 

 Sundevall) ; (2) the pterylosis ; (3) the number of cervical 

 vertebrae ; (4) the mode of arrangement of the deep plantar 

 tendons; (5) the manner of bifurcation of the nasal bones; 

 (6) the presence or absence of caeca ; (7) the condition of the 

 oil-gland (naked or tufted) ; (8) the condition of the palatal 

 bones, especially as regards the presence or absence of basi- 

 pterygoid processes ; (9) the arrangement of the femoral 

 muscles as worked out by Garrod ; (10) the position of the 

 digits; (11) the form of the dorsal vertebrae; (12) the 

 presence or absence of supraorbital fossae. 



Perhaps the most startling innovation introduced by Mr. 

 Seebohm is the proposal to join the Mimogypes, or American 

 Vultures*, into one " Subclass " with his " Picariae" under 

 the name " Coraciifornies," which has already been put for- 

 ward in this Journal (cf. Ibis, 1890, p. 200). Mr. Seebohm 

 is of opinion that the remarkable deviation from the normal 

 structure shown by these two groups in the arrangement of 

 their deep plantar tendons could hardly have been acquired 

 independently. It is certain that the time has now come 

 when the Mimogypes, shown to differ from the true Acci- 

 pitres in so many trenchant characters, must claim to stand 

 as an Order apart, and that one of the forms of Mr. Seebohm's 



* In the present work this group is denominated Cathartes (scr. 

 Cathartce). In the tables of his new system placed before the Zoological 

 Society at the Meeting on March 4th last it was designated by the appro- 

 priate term " Mimogypes." See also above, p. 203. 



