CHAPTER YII 



NEORNITHES CAKINATAE CONCLUDED 



BRIGADE II LEGION II (CORACIOMORPHAE CONCLUDED) 



ORDER : PASSERIFORMES 



Order XIV. PASSERIFORMES. 



This Order contains about five thousand five hundred species, 

 being more than half the birds yet known. Their classification is 

 attended with much difficulty, and the anatomy of many more 

 forms must be investigated before anything approaching a satis- 

 factory not to say final scheme can be proposed. The earlier 

 taxonomers often based their systems largely on European genera, 

 and were therefore obliged to interpose others, or even to recognise 

 new Families, as their knowledge extended, among the many new 

 discoveries, to various American and Australian forms. 



The foundation of recent arrangements of the group, depending 

 on the number or position of the song-muscles, was laid between 

 1845 and 1847 by Johannes Mliller, who divided the then 

 generally accepted Order Insessores into three tribes: (1) Oscines 

 or Polymyodi [Song-birds, or those with many (usually five or seven) 

 pairs of song-muscles] ; (2) Tracheophones [where the bronchi take 

 no part in the formation of the voice-organ] ; and (3) Picarii 

 [corresponding in the main to Nitzsch's Ficariae] ; the two former of 

 which included most of the Passerine forms. Simultaneously with 

 Midler, Cabanis proposed a system grounded on similar principles ; 

 while in 1867 Huxley recognised of his group Coracomorphae the 

 divisions Polymyoiiae, Traclieoplionae, and Oligomyodae [birds 

 with few song-muscles]. About ten years later Garrod, who was 

 followed between 1880 and 1882 by W. A. Forbes, divided the 

 Passeres into Desmodactyli, with a band joining the muscles of the 



