CONFUSION OF CHARACTERS. 119 



granivorous ; and thus their place in the one group 

 or the other would be much more a matter of fancy 

 than a matter of science. 



This blending of characters on the confines of the 

 different divisions, in what manner soever those divi- 

 sions are made, is, in addition to the confusion pro- 

 duced by the three principal means of classification, 

 one of the great difficulties in the proper arrangement 

 of birds. If the comparison may be allowed, birds 

 are like the tints of the rainbow ; we can call these 

 red in one part, yellow in a second, green in a third, 

 and so on ; but no art can fix a line anywhere in 

 the bow which can so divide colour from colour, as to 

 enable one to say, " all on this side is yellow, and all 

 on the other side is red." Even the colour which we 

 can name the most readily is of no measurable breadth 

 as one uniform tint ; for the moment that we, for in- 

 stance, lose the red on the one side of the yellow we 

 begin to find the green on the other ; and therefore, 

 however small a portion of the breadth we take, we 

 always find that, as compared with the whole, it dis- 

 plays more than one tint. 



It is very much the same with birds; and birds, 

 like rainbows, are children of the sun, more affected 

 by that luminary than any other vertebrated animals, 

 and partaking more of those radiant hues which the 

 pencil of the sun alone can limn. We never can 

 draw a definite line between order and order, or group 

 and group ; and as little can we find even a single 

 genus which has no conformation or habit in com- 

 mon with another. When we put the rest of the 

 rainbow out of consideration, we can give a name to 

 the tint of any particular part ; and, in like manner, 

 when we take a single species of bird, and examine 

 it without reference to the rest of the class, we can 



