2 ON THE SYSTEMATIC POSITION OF HESPERORNIS. 
SHUFELDT, in a recent paper,* saying nothing about Ratite affinities, declares, 
parenthetically, his conviction that “however widely separated now, our existing 
Loons and Grebes are derived from the same ancestral stock to which Hesperormis 
regalis belonged.” 
Professor Newton, in his article Birds, in the Encyclopedia Britannica 
(1875), said briefly that Hesperornis “seemed to have been related to the Colym- 
bide; but in his later article, Ornithology (1885), he accepts Marsu’s conclusions, 
and says with him that “it is probable that Hesperornis came off from the 
main ‘Struthious’ stem, and has left no descendants.” 
Mr LyprKker, in his new text-book of Vertebrate paleeontology,t discarding 
the union of Hesperornis and Ichthyornis under Marsu’s Order Odontornithes, states 
that “in its whole skeletal organisation Hesperormis conforms strictly to the 
existing Ratite type,” and classifies it accordingly. 
It is not necessary to quote further from recent literature. It is certain that 
the original view laid down by Mars, of the independence of the Odontornithes 
and of their preponderant affinity with the Ratites, has taken deep root and holds 
its own in the modern text-books. And, further, that those authors who have 
supported the relationship of Hesperornis with the Divers and the Grebes have for 
the most part tried to advocate this view without abandoning the other: to make, 
in short, Hesperornis both an Ostrich and a Grebe! 
It would carry us too far into the general question of the classification of birds 
to discuss the whole problem raised by the systematic position of Hesperornis. In 
the present paper we propose merely to institute a close comparison, bone for bone, 
of its osteological characters with those of Colymbus, to show that it must stand or 
fall by whatever classificatory position may be found acceptable for the latter, and 
that definite resemblances to a typical Ratite, for instance an Ostrich or a Rhea, 
are not to be found. A precisely similar comparison, perhaps less perfect in detail, 
might be instituted between Ichthyornis and the Terns. 
As our type of the Colymbide, we have used throughout Colymbus septentrionalis, 
L., the Red-throated Diver. 
As regards the general resemblance in shape and structure between Hesperornis 
and the birds with which we propose to compare it, nothing need be said. It is 
obvious that the resemblance is marvellously close: and Mars used the skeleton 
of Colymbus to aid his restoration of Hesperornis, though denying the actual 
relationship of the two. 
* Contributions to the Comparative Osteology of Arctic and Sub-Arctic Water Birds. VI. Jowrn. of 
Anat. and Phys. January, 1890. 
{ Auteyne Nicnoxson and R. Lypexxer. 1889. Vol. II., pp. 1222, ete. 
