PECULIARITIES OP THE CLASS. S 
and uniformly prevail ; and whose parts, whether large 
or small, are intimately and harmoniously connected 
with all others in the chain of being. We presume 
that those who desire to understand and enter into the 
views here developed, have made themselves already 
acquainted with the ordinary nomenclature of the 
science, and with the different denomination of groups 
which it contains.* The habits and instincts of birds and 
other animals will form a distinct treatise in this series, 
while their technical internal structure will he left to 
the phyaologist. Their comparative anatomy, as ex- 
hibited in their external construction, is that part of 
the science upon which we shall more particularly ex- 
patiate: first, because there is no work of this de- 
scription at all calculated for the present state of science ; 
and, secondly, because every modification of form in- 
dicates a corresponding peculiarity of food, habit, or 
manners. This subject, which will occupy the greater 
part of our present volume, will render it more par- 
ticularly an Intuoiiuctioh to Modern Ornitholoov. 
The Bibliography and Nomenclature of Birds will then 
follow; after which we shaU lay before the naturalist 
such a systematic arrangement of the different groups 
as appears to us most in accordance with nature. 
(3.) It is easy to perceive that Birds form one of the 
grand divisions of vertehrated animals ; that which is 
most strongly marked, and that which is most isolated. 
A body covered with feathers, instead of hair or wool, 
and the two fore feet transformed into wings, is the 
form under which Nature has now developed one of 
the most lovely groups in creation. The structure of 
birds adapts them for inhabiting an element, from 
which quadrupeds, and even man, is excluded. They 
seem to wander over the regions of space, with 
an ease and celerity of which there is no parallel 
^^ith few exceptions, they are the most 
gifted with the power of locomotion ; since, as it has 
* On the Classiecation of Animals, p. 26G. 
B 2 
