10 Introduction. 



tigate it, the more we shall learn how true it is of the Almighty 

 Creator, that ' God is not the Author of confusion, but of peace.' 



Before I proceed to examine in detail the method of classifying 

 birds, as generally practised by our standard writers on the sub- 

 ject, it may be of interest briefly to trace the several stages by 

 which it has arrived at its present excellence. 



Among ancient writers on Natural History, there are but two, 

 viz., Aristotle and Pliny, who have professed to give any general 

 description of birds ; and interesting, and in some cases instruc- 

 tive, as their treatises in many respects certainly are, they are 

 mixed up with such a mass of absurdity and fable as very much 

 to mar their intrinsic value. In that early stage of ornithological 

 knowledge, of course anything approximating to systematic 

 arrangement was not to be expected. But to come down to more 

 modern times, the first approach to order is traced to Belon and 

 the French naturalists, who in the middle of the sixteenth 

 century began to classify after a certain system. As the ground- 

 work of their scheme was, however, derived from the habitat and 

 food of birds, it was necessarily in many respects very incorrect. 

 In the next century Gesner, at Zurich, and Aldrovandus, at 

 Bologna, struck out a plan in the right direction, by dividing the 

 whole class into land and water birds ; but then, as if satisfied 

 with this good beginning, they deduced their subordinate divi- 

 sions from the nature of the aliment. It was reserved for our 

 own countryman, Willoughby, at the latter end of the seven- 

 teenth century, to lay the foundation of a more accurate arrange- 

 ment ; for, accepting the grand divisions already laid down, of 

 terrestrial and aquatic, he made his subdivisions from inquiries 

 into the general form and structure, and especially from the dis- 

 tinctive characters of the beak and feet ; still he seems to have 

 been unable to shake off completely the prejudices of his time, 

 for he allows varieties in size, the different kinds of food, and 

 such trivial things to bias him in his arrangement. Ray and 

 Pennant followed up the course so well begun by Willoughby, 

 and the close of the last century saw this systematic arrangement 

 from the anatomical structure of birds very generally established. 



