392 BRITISH BIRDS. 



directed towards the manufacture of new genera and 

 the subdivision of existing ones ; to proclaiming the 

 superiority of one system of nomenclature over another ; 

 to the endless alteration and confusion of the classification 

 of species, to the disparagement of each other's labours 

 and the laudation of their own. On one point and on one 

 only were they agreed, much and bitterly as they differed 

 on most other matters : they united in a common hatred 

 and contempt for the field-naturaUsts. 



In the opinion of the chamber-naturah'sts the existence 

 of this third group of ornithologists was only justified 

 by the fact that their observations and investigations 

 provided fresh material for the use and advancement of 

 the very men who decried their labours. It is true that 

 most of the really important contributions to the Hterature 

 of ornithology had come from the pen of the field- 

 naturahsts, but these works were not deemed " scientific " 

 and the chamber-naturahst regarded them as but of 

 small account. 



And now suddenly all this was changed, the pedants 

 and the pundits were threatened with a new and uncon- 

 sidered danger and driven by it to seek their common 

 safety in united action. A Scotsman who had spent his 

 youth in observing and collecting birds, both in the distant 

 islands of the Hebrides and on the mainland of his native 

 country, had in due course of time become professor of 

 Civil and Natural History in a northern university, had 

 devoted his acute and highly trained intellect to the study, 

 not of a single branch but of the whole science of ornitho- 

 logy, and had produced a book which not only recorded 

 the most careful and accurate investigations in the field, 

 but also proposed to create a new scientific classification 

 of birds, founded on the consideration of their digestive 

 organs, which, from the fact that his skill as an anatomist 

 was unassailable and that the proposed scheme of classifi- 

 cation had the further disadvantage of being original, 

 constituted in the opinion of the chamber-naturaHsts 

 a pressing and immediate peril. Presumption combined 



