232 FISSIROSTRAL SUBORDER OF 



sub-orders have been acknowledged, his Syndactyles are far from 

 having been received with the same favour, both because the prin- 

 ciple upon which they are separated is different in kind from that ap- 

 plied in the other groups, and because there has been a strong feeling 

 that the Syndactyle families find proper places among the other sub- 

 orders. Cuvier's Syndactyli are the Bee-eaters (Meropidse), the 

 Motmots (Prionitidse), the Kingfishers (Alcedinidae) the Todties 

 (Todidae) and the Hornbills (Bucerotidse). But there are other 

 birds with syndactyle feet not here included (manikins, for instance), 

 and the character is possessed less perfectly by many birds. If we 

 take the most remarkable cases of syndactyle feet, as the Bee-eaters 

 and the Kingfishers, and consider the effect of the structure, we find 

 that it unfits the bird for walking on branches of trees or on the 

 ground, and is connected with the habit of resting quietly on a 

 branch when not on the wing, and taking prey whilst flying ; hence 

 it is a fissirostral character — not constantly, since small feeble feet 

 with short tarsi may be equally connected with this mode of life, 

 but sufficiently to justify the opinion entertained by so many emi- 

 nent ornithologists that the families first named belong to the Pissi- 

 rostral group, in which Cuvier, limiting its characters too closely aa 

 to the figure of the beak, had only, placed the Swallows and Goat- 

 suckers. The small family of Todidse seems to be best treated as a 

 sub-family of Kingfishers. Another family, nearly related to the 

 Bee-eaters, which is certainly Fissirostral, though with a tendency 

 to the Conirostres, is Coraciada, the Rollers. Setting aside, then, 

 . the Syndactyles by referring their principal families to the Pissi- 

 rostres, and considering the others as disposable elsewhere, in a way 

 that I shall explain before I conclude, our next object will be to 

 determine the proper limits of the Fissirostral sub-order by review- 

 ing the families which have been by good authgrities referred to it. 

 Besides all those which we have already placed in it, and rightly as 

 I think connecting the Jacamars as a sub-family with the King- 

 fishers, Dr. George Gray adds the Trogons (Trogonidae) and the 

 Motmots (Prionitidse). The latter are very deficient in fissirostral 

 characters, and are apparently placed in this position from their sup- 

 posed (but I think not real) relation to the Bee-eaters. I shall 

 venture an opinion as to their real affinities as we proceed. The 

 beautiful family of the Trogonidce certainly does exhibit fissirostral 

 characters, but they seem to be overbalanced by others of a different 

 kind — the arched beak being finely dentated, and the feet exhibiting 



