Classification of Birds. Ill 



form in Aramus giganteus. During the past few years T have 

 compared the skeletons of several hundred species of birds 

 and written out the osteology of nearly every genus in this 

 country, and among all these have been included the entire 

 Crane and Rail group with all the North-American birds in 

 any way related to it. In this manner have Grus, Aramus^ 

 SaUus, Porza7}a, Crex, lonornis, GaUinida, Falica, and others 

 been dealt with, and their skeletal characters arrayed in 

 tabular form in great detail. Without entering upon the 

 general taxonomy of this group, it is an interesting fact that, 

 in so far as the skeletal characters are concerned, Aramus 

 presents two for every one in favour of its affinity with Grus 

 as compared with Rail us ; yet in nearly all avian classifica- 

 tions we find this bird arrayed with the typical Rails. Four 

 years ago I published in England an abstract in which was 

 incorporated some of the facts here stated, with part of a 

 scheme for the classification of this group. Since then I 

 have examined a number of forms at that time not available, 

 and although they have not materially altered my original 

 views, some changes will necessarily have to be made in order 

 to include those facts which have since come before me. 



Of recent years nothing has come to my notice that seems 

 likely to again check the now growing opinion that the Wood- 

 peckers, as another assemblage of birds, see their nearest 

 relatives in the Passeres, and they do not possess those 

 vestiges of lacertilian morphology in the bases of their crania 

 that were formerly supposed to exist there. The double 

 vomers that a few years ago were attributed to them are now 

 generally conceded to be notiiing more than mesial edges of 

 the imperfectly ossified palatines, as was pointed out by 

 Garrod in 1872. In that year Garrod printed a brief paper 

 in ' The Ibis,' in which he claimed that Gecinus viridis and 

 its allies possessed a median vomer, though it was differently 

 formed from the bone as it occurs among some of the Passerine 

 birds. Nevertheless Dr. Sharpe, as late as 1891, in his 

 extremely useful brochure ' Kecent Attempts to Classify 

 Birds,' still claims saurognathism for the Pici, altliough in 

 the same paragraph he admits that in tiiis entire suborder the 

 " vomer is slender, pointed, and split " (p. 84). It is not 

 difficult to believe that all of the alleged saurognathous 

 characters in the skull and associated bony arches of the wood- 

 pfckers are due to changes wrought in time through tiie 

 special habits of this particular group of birds, rather than 

 that they stand in evidence as structural remnants inherited 

 from their ancient reptilian ancestors. 



