18 ON THE CLASSIFICATION OP BIRDS. 
we fancy that both were of the same size. Now it is 
perfectly clear, that as these two animals, when feeding, 
generally insert tlieir muzzle in the ground, so there can 
be no doubt that this particular formation is essential to 
that propensity. The only quadrupeds, again, which 
have the snout inchning upwards, are of the gliriform 
type ; and the only birds in which the bill takes the 
same direction, are typical of the Grallatores. The 
genera of Nmua a), Sorex, Oasyjnis, &c. are 
all types of the gliriforni 
quadrupeds, as those of 
' Trochilus,Avosetta,Trin- 
ga, are of the grallatorial 
structure in birds: so that 
the resemblknce of the 
snout ' of Nasua and 
Avosetta (fig. 8. 6) are 
as like as it is possible, considering that one is a 
quadruped, and the other a bjrd. To the same type also 
belongs the Echidna, or porcupine anteater, the Ame- 
rican genus MyTmecophaga, and the Indian Manis : 
all these are pre-eminently characterised by that great 
prolongation of muzzle, which constitutes, as before 
mentioned, one of the chief characters of the type we 
are now illustrating. It is quite unnecessary, in this 
place, to refute the supposition that the woodpeckers 
— because they have the feet short, and placed very 
far back on the body — are analogous to the natato- 
rial birds. In the first place, we do not admit the fact 
of the feet being so placed : they appear to be so, indeed, 
in the distorted specimens set “ bolt upright ” in our 
museums ; but this is a forced and unnatural position. 
Upon examining a woodpecker, when just dead, it will 
be found that the bend of the knee is precisely parallel, 
or on the same line, with the anus ; and as this form- 
ation exists in all other perching families, it follows that, 
in this respect, there is nothing peculiar in the position 
of the woodpecker’s feet. Furthermore, the analogy 
cannot he true; inasmuch that a natatorial type never 
