instance, Müller places in his third “tribe” the group which he called Ampelidae, meaning thereby the peculiar forms of South America that are now considered to be more properly named Cotingidae, and herein he was clearly right, while Nitzsch, who (misled by their supposed affinity to the genus Ampelis—peculiar to the Northern Hemisphere, and a purely Passerine form) had kept them among his Passcrinae, was as clearly wrong. But again Müller made his third “tribe” Picarii also to contain the Tyrannidae, of which mention has just been made, though it is so obvious as now to be generally admitted that they have no very intimate relationship to the other families with which they are there associated. There is no need here to criticise more minutely this projected arrangement, and it must be said that, notwithstanding his researches, he seems to have had some misgivings that, after all, the separation of the Insessores into those “tribes” might not be justifiable. At any rate he wavered in his estimate of their taxonomic value, for he gave an alternative proposal, arranging all the genera in a single series, a proceeding in those days thought not only defensible and possible, but desirable or even requisite, though now utterly abandoned. Just as Nitzsch had laboured under the disadvantage of never having any example of the abnormal Passeres of the New World to dissect, and, therefore, was wholly ignorant of their abnormality, so Müller never succeeded in getting hold of an example of the genus Pitta for the same purpose, and yet, acting on the clue furnished by Keyserling and Blasius, he did not hesitate to predict that it would be found to fill one of the gaps he had to leave, and this to some extent it has been since proved to do.
It must not be supposed that the vocal muscles were first discovered by Müller; on the contrary, they had been described Yarrell. long before, and by many writers on the anatomy of birds. To say nothing of foreigners, or the authors of general works on the subject, an excellent account of them had been given to the Linnean Society by W. Yarrell in 1829, and published with elaborate figures in its Transactions (xvi. 305-321, pls. 17, 18), an abstract of which was subsequently given in the article “Raven” in his History of British Birds, and Macgillivray also described and figured them with the greatest accuracy ten years later in his work with the same title (ii. 21-37, pls. x.-xii.), while Blyth and Nitzsch had (as already mentioned) seen some of their value in classification. But Müller has the merit of clearly outstriding his predecessors, and with his accustomed perspicuity made the way even plainer for his successors to see than he himself was able to see it. What remains to add is that the extraordinary celebrity of its author actually procured for the first portion of his researches notice in England (Ann. Nat. History, xvii. 499), though it must be confessed not then to any practical purpose; but more than thirty years after there appeared an English translation of his treatise by F. Jeffrey Bell, with an appendix by Garrod containing a summary of the latter's own continuation of the same line of research.[1]
It is now necessary to revert to the year 1842, in which Dr Cornay of Rochefort communicated to the French Academy of Sciences a Cornay. memoir on a new classification of birds, of which, however, nothing but a notice has been preserved (Comptes rendus, xiv. p. 164). Two years later this was followed by a second contribution from him on the same subject, and of this only an extract appeared in the official organ of the Academy (ut supra, xvi. pp. 94, 95), though an abstract was inserted in one scientific journal (L'Institut, xii. p. 21), and its first portion in another (Journal des Découvertes, i. p. 250). The Revue Zoologique for 1847 (pp. 360-369) contained the whole, and enabled naturalists to consider the merits of the author's project, which was to found a new classification of birds on the form of the anterior palatal bones, which he declared to be subjected more evidently than any other to certain fixed laws. These laws, as formulated by him, are that (1) there is a coincidence of form of the anterior palatal and of the cranium in birds of the same order; (2) there is a likeness between the anterior palatal bones in birds of the same order; (3) there are relations of likeness between the anterior palatal bones in groups of birds which are near to one another. These laws, he added, exist in regard to all parts that offer characters fit for the methodical arrangement of birds, but it is in regard to the anterior palatal bone that they unquestionably offer the most evidence. In the evolution of these laws Dr Cornay had most laudably studied, as his observations prove, a vast number of different types, and the upshot of his whole labours, though not very clearly stated, was such as to wholly subvert the classification at that time generally adopted by French ornithologists. He of course knew the investigations of L'Herminier and De Blainville on sternal formation, and he also seems to have been aware of some pterylological differences exhibited by birds whether those of Nitzsch or those of Jacquemin is not stated. True it is the latter were never published in full, but it is quite conceivable that Dr Cornay may have known their drift. Be that as it may, he declares that characters drawn from the sternum or the pelvis—hitherto deemed to be, next to the bones of the head, the most important portions of the bird's framework—are scarcely worth more, from a classificatory point of view, than characters drawn from the bill or the legs; while pterylological considerations, together with many others to which some systematists had attached more or less importance, can only assist, and apparently must never be taken to control, the force of evidence furnished by this bone of all bones—the anterior palatal.
That Dr Cornay was on the brink of making a discovery of considerable merit will by and by appear, but, with every disposition to regard his investigations favourably, it cannot be said that he accomplished it. Whatever proofs Dr Cornay may have had to satisfy himself of his being on the right track, these proofs were not adduced in sufficient number nor arranged with sufficient skill to persuade a somewhat stiff-necked generation of the truth of his views—for it was a generation whose leaders, in France at any rate, looked with suspicion upon any one who professed to go beyond the bounds which the genius of Cuvier had been unable to overpass, and regarded the notion of upsetting any of the positions maintained by him as verging almost upon profanity. Moreover, Dr Cornay's scheme was not given to the world with any of those adjuncts that not merely please the eye but are in many cases necessary, for, though on a subject which required for its proper comprehension a series of plates, it made even its final appearance unadorned by a single explanatory figure, and in a journal, respectable and well known indeed, but one not of the highest scientific rank.
The same year which saw the promulgation of the crude scheme just described, as well as the publication of the final researches of Cabanis. Müller, witnessed also another attempt at the classification of birds, much more limited indeed in scope, but, so far as it went, regarded by most ornithologists of the time as almost final in its operation. Under the vague title of “Ornithologische Notizen” Professor Cabanis of Berlin contributed to the Archiv für Naturgeschichte (xili. 1, pp. 186-256, 308-352) an essay in two parts, wherein, following the researches of Müller[2] on the syrinx, in the course of which a correlation had been shown to exist between the whole or divided condition of the planta or hind part of the “tarsus,” first noticed, as has been said, by Keyserling and Blasius, and the presence or absence of the perfect song-apparatus, the younger author found an agreement which seemed almost invariable in this respect, and he also pointed out that the planta of the different groups of birds in which it is divided is divided in different modes, the mode of division being generally characteristic of the group. Such a coincidence of the internal and external features of birds was naturally deemed a discovery of the greatest value by those ornithologists who thought most highly of the latter, and it was unquestionably of no little practical utility. Further examination also revealed the fact[3] that in certain groups the number of “primaries,” or quill-feathers growing from the manus or distal segment of the wing, formed another characteristic easy of observation. In the Oscines or Polymyodi of Müller the number was either nine or ten—and if the latter the outermost of them was generally very small. In two of the other groups of which Professor Cabanis especially treated—groups which had been hitherto more or less confounded with the Oscines—the number of primaries was invariably ten, and the outermost of them was comparatively large. This observation was also hailed as the discovery of a fact of extraordinary importance; and, from the results of these investigations, taken altogether, ornithology was declared by Sundevall, undoubtedly a man who had a right to speak with authority, to have made greater progress than had been achieved since the days of Cuvier. The final disposition of the “Sub-class Insessores”—all the
- ↑ The title of the English translation is Johannes Müller on Certain Variations in the Vocal Organs of the Passeres that have hitherto escaped notice. It was published at Oxford in 1878. By some unaccountable accident, the date of the original communication to the Academy of Berlin is wrongly printed. It has been rightly given above.
- ↑ On the other hand, Müller makes several references to the labours of Professor Cabanis. The investigations of both authors must have been proceeding simultaneously, and it matters little which actually appeared first.
- ↑ This seems to have been made known by Professor Cabanis the preceding year to the Gesellschaft der Naturforschender Freunde (cf. Müller, Stimmorganen der Passerinen, p. 65). Of course the variation to which the number of primaries was subject had not escaped the observation of Nitzsch, but he had scarcely used it as a classificatory character.
