94 Remarks on Prof. Huxley's 



elsewhere. I therefore think it will be unnecessary for me to 

 trouble my readers with examining in like manner the remaining 

 Suborders of Desmognathce and j^yithognathce. It would be very 

 easy to show that similar exceptions are found in them ; indeed 

 Prof. Huxley has supplied them all ready to hand. Whether it 

 is owing to the individual structure of his own palate, I do not 

 know ; but in what proceeds from it there is always one and the 

 same unvarying character observable. He says what he has to 

 say in the plainest words possible, and he brings forward those 

 facts which tell against his own views as readily as those which 

 support them. To my shame I must say it, I have been here 

 ploughing with his heifer, turning against him the very arms 

 upon which he has wrought. 



But, again, in the groups into which his Suborders are divided, 

 how hard it is for Prof. Huxley to draw real characters from the 

 palatal arrangement ! The Charadriomorphce seem, it is true, 

 very homogeneous in this respect; but in the next group, the 

 GeranomorphcB, we have Grtis antigone alone rejoicing in the 

 possession of basipterygoid processes, while, among the Ceco- 

 morphcE, Procellaria gigantea enjoys a similar privilege. Was it 

 consciousness of this peculiarity which made that Antigone 



' ' contendere quondam 



Cum magni consorte Jovis ; quam regia Juno 

 In vohicrem yertit ;" 



or do sailors nowadays recognize from this feature in the latter 

 an affinity between it and the Anserince, and so call it " Mother 

 Gary's Goose " ? But seriously, do these special exceptions look 

 as if such small modifications of cranial structure were of the 

 highest value in classification ? Surely it would be more agree- 

 able to reason, when we find hints of a relationship between 

 Podargus and Cancroma, and of " a singular superficial resem- 

 blance" which exists between the palate of certain Finches 

 [Loxia and Coccothraustes) and the Psittaci, to consider such 

 likenesses analogical, and to ascribe them to modifications result- 

 ing from somewhat similar methods of taking food — an explana- 

 tion which would serve also to explain the similarity said to exist 

 in this respect between the Cypselidce and HirundinidcB. 



The Suborder which Prof. Huxley has treated most in detail 



