94 CLASS AVES. 



The information, in fact, to be derived in this way amounts to 

 little else than multitudinous lists of synonymes which no hu- 

 man memory could possibly contain, or, if it could, would not 

 be much advantaged by the acquisition. We have frequently 

 taken occasion to observe, in the course of our labours on the 

 Mammalia, the great detriment arising to science from this vain 

 and troublesome pedantry. As we proceed downwards in our 

 researches on animal existence, we find ourselves more and 

 more impeded by it. Nor is ornithology the branch of natural 

 history that suffers least from its pernicious influence. We 

 have not always been able to avoid it ourselves, nor indeed can 

 any writer do so whose business it is to give an account of 

 what has been done by his predecessors in zoology. But we 

 can assure our readers that it is by no means our inclination to 

 indulge in this parade of pretended science, and that our prin- 

 cipal object of condensing within moderate limits as much 

 useful and interesting matter as we can, shall not be lost sight 

 of in the subsequent portions of our work. 



It is, however, but justice to remark that ornithology involves 

 great difficulties of classification, and that this will in some 

 measure account for its multiplication of systems and syno- 

 nymes. Birds are not interdistinguished by such strong leading 

 characters as the mammalia. Their internal organisation is 

 not so varied, nor are even their higher subdivisions charac- 

 terised by the same strongly marked differences. When we 

 consider the different orders of the mammalia, we find each of 

 them distinguished by some leading organ ; some traits of 

 conformation prescribing the absolute necessity of certain 

 habits and modes of existence. This is the case, more or less, 

 from man down to the cetacea. What can be better or more 

 naturally defined than the quadrumana, the carnivora, the 

 rodentia, the ruminantia, the cetacea ? If, in some instances, 

 the grand division of the carnassiei*s, and the pachydermata, 

 are less so, it must be attributed to the reluctance of some 

 naturalists, more especially our author, to the precipitate mul- 



