542 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. [Vor. XXXV. 
only to complete my series of illustrations of the skeletons 
of these birds, but also to bring before the readers of this 
paper the skeleton of a typical auk as a convenient reminder 
of the osteological characters of the bird forms here being 
considered. My space, therefore, will be principally occupied : 
by a presentation of the various views of avian systematists 
on the position of the Alcz in the system. 
The auks and puffins, as is well known, constitute a very 
well circumscribed and distinct group of birds, with apparently 
no outlying forms, and, apart from Plautus impennis, no 
fossil remains of any species of them have as yet been dis- 
covered, or at least described. Dr. Sharpe records none in 
his Hand-List of Birds (1899, pp. 130-133)!  Notwithstand- 
ing these facts, the opinions of the classifiers of birds are by 
no means unanimous on the question of the systematic posi- 
tion of the Alcz. Professor Huxley, for example, grouped 
the Laride and the Alcide in one of his suborders, — 
the Cecomorphe, — and said of the last-named family, * The 
Alcidz in their pterylosis and other characters approach the 
penguins, especially through Alca zmpennzs" (Proc. Zool. Soc., 
1867, p. 458); and Newton has remarked that “the affinity of 
the Alcide or auks (and through them the divers or Colym- 
bidæ) to the gulls may be a matter beyond. doubt, and there 
appears to be ground for considering them to be the degraded 
offspring of the former; but to the present writer it appears 
questionable whether the grebes (Podicipedida) have any real 
affinity to the two families with which they are usually asso- 
ciated; and this is a point deserving of more attention on the 
part of morphologists than it has hitherto received” (Encycl. 
Brit., gth ed., Vol. XVIII, art. “Ornithology,” p. 45). Garrod, 
later on, who certainly entertained very peculiar notions about 
! As this article goes to press I would say that a part of a fossil bone of an auk 
has been received by Mr. Lucas of the United States National Museum from 
a party in California, where it was found. This specimen I have been permitted 
to personally examine. It consists of the proximal moiety of a humerus that 
belonged to a species apparently as large as Plautus, but exhibiting even a more 
feeble development of the pectoral limbs. Mr. Lucas has described this specimen 
before the Biological Society of Washington, D.C., and his description will be 
published later on. 
