Obituary. 607 



in the " Aves " of the ' Fauna Peruana ' (1815-6) . Peru was 

 a little-explored country in those days, and we can well 

 understand that assistance from the Berlin Museum was of 

 much value to the author. Cabanis's contributions to the 

 1 Fauna Peruana ' are mostly printed in footnotes, but it is 

 evident that he exercised a general supervision over the whole 

 of the text. 



In 1847 Cabanis published in ' Wiegmann's Archiv' two 

 parts of a remarkable memoir on the classification of the 

 Passeres, in which it was first shown that two points pre- 

 viously almost neglected (the mode of scutellation of the 

 tarsus and the number of the wing- and tail-feathers) were 

 available for the subdivision of this great Order. These 

 characters were further explained and utilized by Cabanis 

 in subsequent publications, and are now generally allowed 

 to be of leading importance. In 1848 Cabanis prepared the 

 section relating to " Birds " for Schomburgk's s Fauna and 

 Flora of British Guiana ' — the first systematic work on that 

 subject, and even in these days often quoted and referred to 

 as the best authority on the zoology of the country. 



Two years later Cabanis began the f Museum Heineanum/ 

 perhaps the most important work he ever wrote, containing 

 an account of the verv extensive collection of birds belonein°- 

 to Ferdinand Heine of Halberstadt and kept in his private 

 museum. In this work, the last part of which was issued in 

 1863, numerous new genera and species were described and a 

 large number of critical notes of every kind were introduced, 

 while the system of classification which Cabanis advocated 

 was fully set forth. 



Other important memoirs and papers by Cabanis are his 

 account of the birds of Cuba obtained by Gundlach (J. f. O. 

 1854-57) ; of those of Costa Rica from the collections of 

 Hoffman and v. Frantzius (J. f. O. 1860-2) ; of Baron von 

 der Decken's collection from East Africa (1869) ; of Schulz's 

 Argentine collections (1883) ; and, in conjunction with 

 Dr. Reichenow, of the ornithological results of the ' Gazelle ' 

 Expedition (1876). There are besides a number of other 

 shorter papers and notes, which testify to his untiring 



