Vol. XXXV.] 74 



to say where this belongs. All the earlier naturalists placed 

 the Owls with the birds of prey. But an investigation into 

 theii anatomy has sliown that the Owls have nothing what- 

 ever to do with the birds of prey. These birds afford one 

 instance of the reformation in our system of classification, 

 which has brought about the study of the deeper-seated 

 characters. Coloration is undoubtedly an extremely valuable 

 guide, but our efforts must be to make our schemes of 

 classification express descent as much as possible. This 

 we should be able to do if, instead of making genera of 

 certain groups of species, we made them into " sections " 

 of genera. 



1 hope more attention will be paid to this aspect of 

 classification, and that we may endeavour, at some future 

 meeting, to devise some scheme of terminology which will 

 group birds according to their coloui'-patterus, instead of 

 splitting them up into a number of genera. 



The Chairman : I must ask you to excuse me for rising 

 first to make a remark on the very interesting introduction 

 to this discussion which has been made by Dr. Lowe and 

 Mr. Pycraft. Personally I am not entirely in sympathy 

 with either of them. I find it very difficult to express my 

 dissent from the two gentlemen who have opened the dis- 

 cussion, because Dr. Lowe started off by saying that colour 

 in itself did not enter into his discussion at all, but only 

 colonr-pattern. A very large number of writers on orni- 

 thology — I need only mention one, our good friend Count 

 Salvador! — have taken colour as a reason for separating 

 birds generically. 



It is much more difficult to answer an authority who 

 takes the colour-pattern ; but, for all that, as Dr. Lowe 

 in one of his diagrams has taken a certain group of the 

 Drepanididse as an example, and ias I had brought up these 

 birds to illustrate what I was going to say, I will only 

 point out where I differ from him. The family Drepanididae, 

 which is confined to the Sandwich Islands, has been 

 classified by all writers entirely — or almost entirely — on 



