ICi Obituary. 



celebrated memoir on tlie Classifieation of Birds '^, which he 

 brought before the Zoological Society on the 11th April, 

 1867. This memoir, we need hardly say, effected a complete 

 revolution in the hitherto generally adopted arrangement of 

 birds. Some of Huxley's conclusions have, no doubt, been 

 modified by the subsequent work of Parker, Garrod, Forbes, 

 Fiirbringer, and others. But the great value of cranial 

 characters in the arrangement of birds remains almost un- 

 impaired to the present day, and is fully recognized by all the 

 leading system atists. 



Huxley's second great Bird-paper was brought before the 

 Zoological Society in May of the following year (1868), and 

 related to the characters and distribution of the GalHnce f 

 and their relatives. The division, then first suggested, of the 

 typical Gallince into '' Peristeropodes" and ^' Alectoropodes," 

 has been agreed to and adopted by all subsequent authorities. 

 Here, too, Huxley left his mark, as he did on every subject 

 which he handled. Of no one n)ay it be more truly said, 

 " Nihil tetigit, quod non ornavit."" 



* " Ou the Classification of Birds ; aud on the Taxonomic Value of the 

 Modifications of certain of the Cranial Bones observable in that Class," 

 P.Z.S. 1867, pp. 415-472. 



t " On the Classification and Distribution of the Alectoromoiyha' and 

 Hekromorpha-;' P. Z. S. 1868, pp. 294-319. 



