proposed Classification of Birds. 95 



is that of the Aetoinorplue, equivalent to the Accipitres of Cuvicr, 

 and to the Raptores of most ornithologists. Herein he gives us 

 an entirely new arrangement of the families composing it, to 

 which I must briefly advert. Leaving the StrigidcB as they were, 

 he breaks up the usually recognized family Vulturida, and taking 

 out the Vultures of the New World, Cathurtes and Sarcorham- 

 phus, makes a family of them by the name Cathartid(S ; while he 

 combines the Vultures of the Old World, Neophron, Vidtur, Gyps, 

 and others, with the ordinary Falconida in one family, bearing 

 the designation of Gypaetidce, and erects the genus Gypogeranus 

 into the fourth family of the Suborder under the name Gypoge- 

 ranidce. Except that I have some suspicions as to the real 

 affinity of the Strigida with the rest of what are commonly called 

 " Birds of Prey,'^ I see no objection to this proposal ; and I am 

 quite ready to admit that the differences observable in the cranial 

 structure of the Vultures of the Old World and those of the New 

 are, when taken with the other characters cited, sufficient to 

 justify the separation. So far as I know (but my knowledge, I 

 must say, is only at second hand), there is no appreciable diver- 

 gence in the habits of scavengers on either side of the Atlantic ; 

 the modifications which exist, therefore, cannot in this case be 

 ascribed to any such cause as I suggested a few lines previously ; 

 and I am certainly not going to refuse some importance being 

 attributed to slight cranial characteristics. To me it appears 

 that every part of a bird^s structure, to say nothing of every 

 peculiarity in its mode of life, may, under certain aspects, throw 

 light upon its affinities, and consequently on its real position in 

 the System of Nature. For a long time I deemed the coracoid 

 bone to be the most characteristic in the ornithic skeleton — not 

 that I ever wished to rest a system of classification entirely upon 

 that basis. I have not yet quite divested myself of this idea, 

 though when, rather more than two years since, I first became 

 acquainted with the form of the coracoid in Didus, a form so 

 utterly unlike any other of which I know, my theory received a 

 somewhat rude shock, which has lately been renewed on finding 

 that in Pezophaps, unquestionably a close relative of Didus, the 

 coracoid exhibits little, if any, of the same form, as I hope shortly 

 to make generally known. But this fact merely corroborates the 



