No. 448.] CLASSIFICA TION OF BIRDS. 



taxonomer, and so on for all those who have engaged in this 

 difficult subject. 



Finally, there is the great question upon which no two ornith- 

 ologists now entertain similar opinions, and that is upon the 

 various relationships of birds. Both this and the former ques- 

 tion, however, depend entirely upon the amount of knowledge 

 on the subject possessed by any particular taxonomer. The 

 more exact and far-reaching this is, the nearer and sooner will 

 he arrive at the truth. 



In any event, it is very clear to me that the day is still far 

 away when ornithologists will be agreed in reference to all these 

 points. It is purely a matter of evolution, of development, and 

 the acquirement of the necessary knowledge. Guess work will 

 never attain the desired end, nor will any one man settle it. It 

 seems to me, however, that we are in a position to di.scuss and 

 settle one class of questions, that is in the case of birds, what 

 groups shall be adopted in their classification, and what charac- 

 ters in birds themselves shall stand for those groups. For the 

 rest the larger part of it depends upon substantially adding to our 

 present knowledge of the morphology of these forms in its widest 

 sense, and this to be supplemented by a very general knowledge of 

 the entire life histories of all existing birds. From the very nature 

 of things the latter advances with far greater rapidity than does 

 the former, and we stand in great need of the addition of 

 many more laborers in the fields of avian morpholog)-. Death 

 has materially thinned the ranks of this part of our army within 

 a comparatively short space of time, and it has been princii)ally 

 the great captains of whom we have been deprived, — and \vc 

 have by no means rallied from the loss of such workers in the 

 anatomy of birds as Huxley, two of the Parkers, (icgenbaur, 

 Garrod, Forbes, and other men of their calibre, power and 

 influence, anyone of whom would have said that the solution 

 of the classification of birds lies in our commanding a knowledge 

 of their history and structure. 



