38 On the Taxonomy of the Sivifts mid Humming-birds. 



Mr. Lucas's taxonomy of the birds we have under con- 

 sideration which is so completely twisted round, and not the 

 Trochilidine humerus. 



My apologies are due to those " few benighted orni- 

 thologists" alluded to in the first paragraph of ray critic's 

 paper. What I said about their views was prompted by 

 an observation made by Professor Parker in his letter of 

 February 9tli (1887) referred to above. He remarked : — 

 " Don't let us be in a hurry ; it is a give-and-take business. 

 In oruithotomy we come across things deeper than those seen 

 and argued about by the mere ornithologist. Those of the 

 latter group_, here, are dead against the doctrine of Swifts 

 being a kind of iSwallow." But Professor Parker had a 

 very good excuse for writing as he did ; for in a letter 

 written to me in September 1887 he says of himself that 

 " the whole Class is always flitting and flying through my 

 mind, so that you can't wonder at my being somewhat bird- 

 witted, as the expression goes." And in the month pre- 

 ceding of the same year, or in August, he said : — " The 

 Cypselidffi, although segithognathous, I should set close to 

 the Hirundiuidffi, but outside the line, as the most Passerine 

 of the utterly polymorphic Cuculines {' Coccygomorphse ') . 

 The latter group is one-tenth the size of the Coracomorphje, 

 and ten times as variable. ... I should make it begin with 

 the Swifts and end with the Parrots." 



Before closing this brief paper I desire to express my 

 thanks to Mr, Lucas for the loan of a skeleton of Collo- 

 calia, for the skulls of Macropterijx and Cypselus apus, with 

 some limb-bones of the last two, and for what he has written 

 about them in ' The Ibis.' As he truly remarks, Macro- 

 pteryx is a specially interesting form, and I would add that 

 it is of the highest importance to avian classification that the 

 anatomy of all the Swifts and Swift-like birds now retained by 

 ornithologists in that group should be thoroughly examined. 

 The fact that Macropteryx mystacea apparently lacks basi- 

 pterygoid processes, but has the mandible in one piece like 

 the Cypseli, must be remembered in connection with Huxley's 

 observation — " The modification commenced in the Swift is 



