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THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. [Vol. XXXVII. 



after he has grouped the ostriches together: "A little further 

 afield we should come to the Apteryges, and here attention 

 should be drawn to the ralline tendencies of these abnormal 

 Ratitse, with all those other peculiar characteristics on which 

 it is not necessary here to dilate at length." Just why the 

 Apteryx should be called "abnormal" more than any other 

 bird living, or extinct, I fail to see. Any puzzling form may 

 seem abnormal when persistent attempts are made to force it 

 into an assemblage of other forms where it does not strictly 

 belong. 



Again, Furbringer in his vertical aspect of the phylogenetic 

 tree of birds has the branch Apterygiformes arise from the 

 main trunk near the rails and far removed from any of the 

 ostriches. In his opinion this Apterygian branch soon forked, 

 however, and gave rise to the two families, Apterygidae and 

 Dinornithidse. In his lineal scheme the position given these 

 is in an order Alectoronithes, containing the Apteryges, the 

 Crypturi, the Gallinae, and the Opisthocomidae. Many large 

 groups both of land and water birds in this lineal scheme 

 separate them from the ostrich birds, and it is very evident 

 from all this that Furbringer was of the opinion that the moas 

 and kiwis are but very remotely related to the ostriches, the 

 rheas, the emeus, the cassowaries, or any of the rest of that 

 assemblage. 



T. J. Parker commented upon this in the following words : 

 "The most definite opinion I have met with as to the phy- 

 logeny of the Ratitae is that expressed in the elaborate genea- 

 logical tree which illustrates Ftirbringer's great work. He 

 ascribes a common origin to the moas and kiwis and to the 

 emeus and cassowaries, but derives his four main groups of 

 Ratitae — the Struthioniformes, Rheiformes, Casuariformes, 

 and Apterygiformes — separately from a primitive stock. 



" Mivart, in his memoir on the axial skeleton of the Ratitae 

 {Trans. Zo'dl. Soc, Vol. X, 1871), gives no definite opinion as 

 to the phylogeny of the group, but his diagram illustrating the 

 mutual relationships of the various genera seems to indicate 

 his belief in their monophyletic origin. He shows a main 

 stem dividing into two branches ; one of these divides again 



