546 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. (Vor. XXXV. 
In this scheme Dr. Gadow includes Attagis in the 
Thinocoride, and very widely separates the Charadriifor- 
mes, as constituted above by him, from the Sphenisciformes 
(8 of his scheme) and the Procellariiformes (9 of his 
scheme), — these last two groups having the Ardeiformes 
(10), the Falconiformes (11), the Anseriformes (12), Cryptu- 
riformes (13), Galliformes (14), and Gruiformes (15), standing 
between the Colymbiformes (7) and the aforesaid Charadrii- 
formes (16). In other words, the loons and grebes are 
separated in this lineal arrangement from the group con- 
taining the auks and gulls, by the groups containing the 
penguins, the Tubinares, the Steganopodes, the herons, the 
Cathartidae and Accipitres, the Crypturi, the fowls, and 
the Gruiformes. 
This curious arrangement has doubtless been produced by 
the way in which the structural characters have been employed 
and contrasted. The entire scheme is highly unnatural in 
many particulars, as, for example, the relations indicated for 
the flamingoes to the storks, the two families alone represent- 
ing the Pelargi, and this last group being associated with the 
herons and Steganopodes in an order, Ardeiformes. Between 
this last and the order Anseriformes stands the order Falconi- 
formes, thus giving not the slightest suggestion as to the 
undoubted relation of the flamingoes to the anserine birds. 
This comes of the danger of using too many structural char- 
acters, and those characters of very different values and 
weight, and not properly contrasted. Such a practice will be 
sure to lead one away from the correct solution of the true 
relationships existing among birds in nature, taking the group 
as a whole, both existing and extinct, since birds were birds s 
all, in time; — and it is the expression of this in a taxonomic 
scheme of some sort or other that really we all are so desirous 
of perfecting. Sometimes, too, even the /ineal scheme of so 
high an authority as Dr. Max Fürbringer is open to the same 
criticism, but not so when we come to examine the famous 
“avian tree " he constructed for us, and published in his great 
classic on the Subject, Untersuchungen sur Morphologie und 
Systematik der Vögel, in 1888. With respect to the Alcæ, m 
