144 Zoological Society : — 



Dec. 8, 1863.— E. W. H. Holdsworth, Esq., F.Z.S., iii the Chair. 



On the Systematic Position of the Crested Screamer 

 (Palamedea chavaria). By W. K. Parker. 



Many years ago, at a time when the only collection of foreign 

 living creatures seen by me was contained in Wombwell's travelling 

 menagerie, my observations on the structure of birds were necessa- 

 rily confined, for the most part, to our native species. I am glad of 

 this now, as they are nearly all of pvre types ; and from childhood 

 their life and conversation yielded me a pleasure nearly equal to that 

 derived from communion with bipeds of the plumeless kind. 



If the structure of the pure or unmixed types had not been stu- 

 died by me first in such a way as to make the most definite mind- 

 images, there would have been for me no good firm ground to stand 

 upon whilst contemplating the structure and relationships of such 

 birds as the Trumpeter (Psophia), the Cariama (Dicholophus), and 

 the Palamedea. Any study, however, of the Bird class which should 

 go no further than its own border-line would be fruitful in bringing 

 to light difficulties and even paradoxes : a physiologist might as 

 well study the functions of one class of organs to the total neglect of 

 the rest of the body, the beautiful tvhole. I have for some time 

 past held to the belief that the birds should not be termed a class, 

 as though they formed a group e(pial to that of the Mammalia ; I 

 find that Professor Huxley holds the same views. 



If that is the case, we have some explanation of the great unifor- 

 mity of the feathered tribes ; for it is a fact that the remotest forms 

 in the group are really not far apart in nature, and the smaller groups 

 are closely intertwined one amongst another. 



There are two principal conditions of nearness to the Reptilia in 

 the great Bird group : first the combination of mammalian and of 

 reptilian characters with what is truly ornithic, as in the Ostriches ; 

 and the second is when the aberrant characters are only reptilian, 

 and for the most part lacertian*. 



Now it is with lacertian characters, rather than with what we find 

 in the Crocodile and the Chelonian, that we have to deal in such birds 

 as the Palamedea and other mixed forms which are not far from it in 

 actual nature, but are striving, as it were, to attain to the full typical- 

 ness of other groups than that to which the Palamedea really belongs. 



The discovery of such a marvellous creature as Von Meyer's Ar- 

 chceopteryx must of necessity give the scientific mind a thirsty long- 

 ing to know more of the relations, and of the true causes of the rela- 

 tions, of these mid vertebrates, the reptiles and birds, — cold-blooded, 

 scaly, slow, and often loathsome on one hand ; on the other warm, 

 intensely active, and endued with the highest locomotive powers, and 

 beautiful beyond the power of words to express. 



There are two very beautiful groups of birds, rich in species, with 

 very clearly defined characters, both standing at about the same 



* The skull of every bird known conforms, on the whole, not so much to the 

 crocodilian as to the lacertian type ; their horny jaw-sheaths, large symmetrical 

 sternum, and almost fixed ribs are chelonian in their nature. 



