Rusticolae: a. Phalarides—Rallus, Fulica, Parra; b. Limosugae—Numenius, Scolopax, Tringa, Charadrius, Recurvirostra.
B.
Grallae: a. Erodii—Ardeae ungue intermedio serrato, Cancroma; b. Pelargi—Ciconia, Mycteria, Tantoli quidam, Scopus, Platalea; c. Gerani—Ardeae cristatae, Grues, Psophia.
C.
Otis.
II.
Aves Ratitae.—Struthio.
The most novel feature, and one the importance of which
most ornithologists of the present day are fully prepared to
admit, is the separation of the class Aves into two great divisions,
which from one of the most obvious distinctions they present
were called by its author Carinatae[1] and Ratitae,[2] according as
the sternum possesses a keel (crista in the phraseology of many
anatomists) or not. But Merrem, who subsequently communicated
to the Academy of Berlin a more detailed memoir on
the “flat-breasted” birds,[3] was careful not here to rest his
divisions on the presence or absence of their sternal character
alone. He concisely cites (p. 238) no fewer than eight other
characters of more or less value as peculiar to the Carinate
Division, the first of which is that the feathers have their barbs
furnished with hooks, in consequence of which the barbs, including
those of the wing-quills, cling closely together; while among
the rest may be mentioned the position of the furcula and
coracoids,[4] which keep the wing-bones apart; the limitation of
the number of the lumbar vertebra to fifteen, and of the
carpals to two; as well as the divergent direction of the iliac
bones—the corresponding characters peculiar to the Ratite
Division being the disconnected condition of the barbs of the
feathers, through the absence of any hooks whereby they might
cohere; the non-existence of the furcula, and the coalescence
of the coracoids with the scapulae (or, as he expressed it, the
extension of the scapulae to supply the place of the coracoids,
which he thought were wanting); the lumbar vertebrae being
twenty and the carpals three in number; and the parallelism
of the iliac bones.
As for Merrem’s partitioning of the inferior groups there is
less to be said in its praise as a whole, though credit must be
given to his anatomical knowledge for leading him to the perception
of several affinities, as well as differences, that had never
before been suggested by superficial systematists. But it must
be confessed that (chiefly, no doubt, from paucity of accessible
material) he overlooked many points, both of alliance and the
opposite, which since his time have gradually come to be
admitted.
Notice has next to be taken of a Memoir on the Employment
of Sternal Characters in establishing Natural Families among
Birds, which was read by De Blainville before the
Academy of Sciences of Paris in 1815,[5] but not published
in full for more than five years later (Journalde physique . . . et des arts, xcii. 185–215), though an
De Blainville.
abstract forming part of a Prodrome d’une nouvelle distributiondu règne animal appeared earlier (op. cit. lxxxiii. 252, 253,
258, 259; and Bull. soc. philomath. de Paris, 1816, p. 110).
This is a very disappointing performance, since the author
observes that, notwithstanding his new classification of birds
is based on a study of the form of the sternal apparatus, yet,
because that lies wholly within the body, he is compelled to have
recourse to such outward characters as are afforded by the
proportion of the limbs and the disposition of the toes—even as
had been the practice of most ornithologists before him! It
is evident that the features of the sternum of which De Blainville
chiefly relied were those drawn from its posterior margin, which
no very extensive experience of specimens is needed to show are
of comparatively slight value; for the number of “échancrures”—notches
as they have sometimes been called in English—when
they exist, goes but a very short way as a guide, and is so variable
in some very natural groups as to be even in that short way
occasionally misleading.[6] There is no appearance of his having
at all taken into consideration the far more trustworthy characters
furnished by the anterior part of the sternum, as well as by the
coracoids and the furcula. Still De Blainville made some advance
in a right direction, as for instance by elevating the parrots[7]
and the pigeons as “Ordres,” equal in rank to that of the birds
of prey and some others. According to the testimony of
L’Herminier (for whom see later) he divided the “Passereaux”
into two sections, the “faux” and the “vrais”; but, while the
latter were very correctly defined, the former were most arbitrarily
separated from the “Grimpeurs.” He also split his Grallatores
and Natatores (practically identical with the Grallae and Anseres
of Linnaeus) each into four sections; but he failed to see—as
on his own principles he ought to have seen—that each of these
sections was at least equivalent to almost any one of his other
“Ordres.” He had, however, the courage to act up to his own
professions in collocating the rollers (Coracias) with the bee-eaters
(Merops), and had the sagacity to surmise that Menura
was not a Gallinaceous bird. The greatest benefit conferred by
this memoir is probably that it stimulated the efforts, presently
to be mentioned, of one of his pupils, and that it brought more
distinctly into sight that other factor, originally discovered by
Merrem, of which it now clearly became the duty of systematizers
to take cognizance.
Following the chronological order we are here adopting, we
next have to recur to the labours of Nitzsch, who, in 1820, in
a treatise on the nasal glands of birds—a subject that
had already attracted the attention of Jacobson
(Nouv. Bull. soc. philomath. de Paris, iii. 267–269)—first put
forth in Meckel’s Deutsches Archiv für die Physiologie (vi.
Nitzsch.
251-269) a statement of his general views on ornithological classification
which were based on a comparative examination of those
bodies in various forms. It seems unnecessary here to occupy
space by giving an abstract of his plan,[8] which hardly includes
any but European species, because it was subsequently elaborated
with no inconsiderable modifications in a way that must presently
be mentioned at greater length. But the scheme, crude as it was,
possesses some interest. It is not only a key to much of his
later work—to nearly all indeed that was published in his lifetime—but
in it are founded several definite groups (for example,
Passerinae and Picariae) that subsequent experience has shown
to be more or less natural; and it further serves as additional
evidence of the breadth of his views, and his trust in the teachings
of anatomy.
That Nitzsch took this extended view is abundantly proved
by the valuable series of ornithotomical observations which he
must have been for some time accumulating, and almost immediately
afterwards began to contribute to the younger Naumann’s
excellent Naturgeschichte der Vögel Deutschlands, already noticed
above. Besides a concise general treatise on the organization of
birds to be found in the Introduction to this work (i. 23-52), a
brief description from Nitzsch’s pen of the peculiarities of the
internal structure of nearly every genus is incorporated with the
author’s prefatory remarks, as each passed under consideration,
↑“Beschreibung des Gerippes eines Casuars nebst einigen beiläufigen
Bemerkungen über die flachbrüstigen Vögel,” Abhandl. derBerlin. Akademie, Phys. Klasse (1817), pp. 179-198, tabb. i.-iii.
↑Merrem, as did many others in his time, calls the coracoids
“claviculae”; but it is now well understood that in birds the real
claviculae form the furcula or “merry-thought.”
↑This view of them had been long before taken by Willughby,
but abandoned by all later authors.
↑This plan, having been repeated by Schöpss in 1829 (op. cit. xii.
p. 73). became known to Sir R. Owen in 1835, who then drew to it
the attention of Kirby (Seventh Bridgewater Treatise, ii. pp. 444, 445),
and in the next year referred to it in his own article “Aves” in
Todd’s Cyclopaedia of Anatomy (i. p. 266), so that Englishmen need
no excuse for not being aware of one of Nitzsch’s labours, though
his more advanced work of 1829, presently to be mentioned, was not
referred to by Sir R. Owen.