NEWTON’S TRIBUTE TO MACGILLIVRAY 135 
differences and resemblances in the vocal muscles, 
he left it to Johannes Muller to point out their 
taxonomic value. The explanation is doubtless 
perfectly simple, that all the energy MacGillivray 
could spare from professorial duties and Brod - 
wissenschaft was occupied in the great task of 
completing his History of British Birds , of working 
out the actual descriptions—so incomparably 
well done. He never had time to return to the 
general problem of natural relationships. 
Of MacGillivray’s contribution to the classifica¬ 
tion of birds, the late Prof. Alfred Newton writes 
in the Introduction to his Dictionary of Birds 
(1896):— 
“ No one in Britain seems to have attempted 
to found any scientific arrangement of birds 
on other than external characters until, in 1837, 
William MacGillivray issued the first volume of 
his History of British Birds , wherein, though 
professing (p. 19) ‘not to add a new system to the 
many already in partial use, or that have passed 
away like their authors/ he propounded (pp. 16- 
18) a scheme for classifying the birds of Europe 
at least, founded on a ‘consideration of the 
digestive organs, which merit special attention, on 
account, not so much of their great importance 
in the economy of birds, as the nervous, vascular 
and other systems are not behind them in this 
respect; but because, exhibiting great diversity 
of form and structure, in accordance with the 
nature of the food, they are more obviously 
qualified to afford a basis for the classification of 
the numerous species of birds’ (p. 52). Experi¬ 
ence has again and again exposed the fallacy of 
