﻿18 ON THE CLASSIFICATION OF BIRDS. 



we fancy that both were of the same size. Now it is 

 perfectly clear, that as these two animals, when feeding, 

 generally insert their muzzle in the ground, so there can 

 be no doubt that this particular formation is essential to 

 that propensity. The only quadrupeds, again, which 

 have the snout inclining upwards, are of the gliriform 

 type ; and the only birds in which the bill takes the 

 same direction, are typical of the Grallatores. The 

 genera of Nasua ( fig. 8. a), Sorex, Dasypus, &c. are 

 all types of the gliriform 

 quadrupeds, as those . of 

 Trochilus,Avosetta, Trin- 

 ga, are of the grallatorial 

 structure in birds : so that 

 the resemblance of the 

 snout of Nasua and 

 Avosetta (fig. 8. b) are 

 as like as it is possible, considering that one is a 

 quadruped, and the other a bird. To the same type also 

 belongs the Echidna, or porcupine anteater, the Ame- 

 rican genus Myrmecophaga, and the Indian Manis : 

 all these are pre-eminently characterised by that great 

 prolongation of muzzle, which constitutes, as before 

 mentioned, one of the chief characters of the type we 

 are now illustrating. It is quite unnecessary, in this 

 place, to refute the supposition that the woodpeckers 

 — because they have the feet short, and placed very 

 far back on the body — are analogous to the natato- 

 rial birds. In the first place, we do not admit the fact 

 of the feet being so placed : they appear to be so, indeed, 

 in the distorted specimens set u bolt upright " in our 

 museums ; but this is a forced and unnatural position. 

 Upon examining a woodpecker, when just dead, it will 

 be found that the bend of the knee is precisely parallel, 

 or on the same line, with the anus ; and as this form- 

 ation exists in all other perching families, it follows that, 

 in this respect, there is nothing peculiar in the position 

 of the woodpecker's feet. Furthermore, the analogy 

 cannot be true ; inasmuch that a natatorial type never 



