Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/36

 26 OKNITHOLOGY relationship to Trinya (see SANDPIPER), a point of order which other systematists were long in admitting. On the whole Brandt s labours were of no small service in asserting the principle that con sideration must be paid to osteology ; for his position was such as to gain more attention to his views than some of his less favourably placed brethren had succeeded in doing. leyser- In the same year (1839) another slight advance was made in the ng and classification of the true Passerines. KEYSEULIXG and BLASIUS ! tlasius. briefly pointed out in the ArchivfurNaturgeschichU (v. pp. 332-334) that, while all the other Birds provided with perfect song-muscles j had the &quot; planta &quot; or hind part of the &quot; tarsus &quot; covered with two long and undivided horn} 7 plates, the LAUK.S (vol. xiv. p. 316) had this part divided by many transverse sutures, so as to be scutellated | behind as well as in front ; just as is the case in many of the j Passerines which have not the singing-apparatus, and also in the ; HOOPOK (vol. xii. p. 154). The importance of this singular but superficial departure from the normal structure has been so need lessly exaggerated as a character that at the present time its value is apt to be unduly depreciated. In so large and so homogeneous , a group as that of the true Passerines, a constant character of this j kind is not to be despised as a practical mode of separating the Birds which possess it ; and, more than this, it would appear that the discovery thus announced was the immediate means of leading to a series of investigations of a much more important and lasting nature those of Johannes Miiller to be presently mentioned. Again we must recur to that indefatigable and most ritzsch. original investigator NITZSCH, who, having never inter mitted his study of the particular subject of his first con tribution to science, long ago noticed, in 1833 brought out at Halle, where he was Professor of Zoology, an essay with the title Pterylographix Avium Pars prior. It seems that this was issued as much with the object of inviting assistance from others in view of future labours, since the materials at his disposal were comparatively scanty, as with that of making known the results to which his researches had already led him. Indeed he only com municated copies of this essay to a few friends, and examples of it are comparatively scarce. Moreover, he stated subsequently that he thereby hoped to excite other naturalists to share with him the investigations he was making on a subject which had hitherto escaped notice or had been wholly neglected, since he considered that he had proved the disposition of the feathered tracts in the plumage of Birds to be the means of furnishing characters for the discrimination of the various natural groups as significant and important as they were new and un expected. 1 There was no need for us here to quote this essay in its chronological place, since it dealt only with the generalities of the subject, and did not enter upon any systematic details. These the author reserved for a second treatise which he was destined never to complete. He kept on diligently collecting materials, and as he did so 1 It is still a prevalent belief among near y all persons but well- informed ornithologists, that feathers grow almost uniformly over the wholj surface of a Bird s body ; some indeed are longer and some are shorter, but that is about all the difference perceptible to most people. It is the easiest thing for anybody to satisfy himself that this, except in a few cases, is altogether an erroneous supposition. In all but a small number of forms the feathers are produced in very definite clumps or tracts, called by Nitzsch /&amp;gt;&amp;lt;eryZ/E (irrtpAv, penna, VTI, sylva], a rather fanciful term it is true, but one to which no objection can be taken. Between these pterylse, are spaces bare of feathers, which he named apteria. Before Nitzsch s time the only men who seem to have noticed ! this fact were the great John Hunter and the accurate Macartney. But the observations of the former on the subject were not given to the world | until 1836, when Sir R. Owen introduced them into his Catalogue of the Museum of the College of Surgeons in London (vol. iii. pt. ii. p. 311), and therein is no indication of the fact having a taxonomical bearing. The same may be said of Macartney s remarks, which, though subsequent in point of time, were published earlier, namely, in 1819 (Rees s Cyclopaedia, xiv., art. &quot;Feathers&quot;). Ignorance of this simple fact has led astray many celebrated painters, among them Sir Edwin L-mdseer, whose pictures of Birds nearly always shew an unnatural representation of the plumage that at once betrays itself to the trained eye, though of course it is not perceived by spectators generally, who regard only the correctness of attitude and force of expression, which in that artist s work commonly leave little to be desired. Every draughtsman of Birds to be successful should study the plan on which their feathers are disposed. was constrained to modify some of the statements he had published. He consequently fell into a state of doubt, and before he could make up his mind on some questions which he deemed important he was overtaken by death. 2 Then his papers were handed over to his friend and suc cessor Prof. BORMEISTER, now and for many years past of Bur- Buenos Aires, who, with much skill elaborated from mdster. them the excellent work known as Nitzsch s Pterylo- cjraphie, which was published at Halle in 1840. There can be no doubt that Prof. Burmeister (fortunately yet spared to us) discharged his editorial duty with the most conscientious scrupulosity ; but, from what has been just said, it is certain that there were important points on which Nitzsch was as yet undecided some of them perhaps of which no trace appeared in his manu scripts, and therefore as in every case of works posthum ously published, unless (as rarely happens) they have received their author s &quot;imprimatur,&quot; they cannot be implicitly trusted as the expression of his final views. It would consequently be unsafe to ascribe positively all that appears in this volume to the result of Nitzsch s mature consideration. Moreover, as Prof. Burmeister states in his preface, Nitzsch by no means regarded the natural sequence of groups as the highest problem of the system- atist, but rather their correct limitation. Again the arrangement followed in the Pterylographie was of course based on pterylographical considerations, and we have its author s own word for it that he was persuaded that the limitation of natural groups could only be attained by the most assiduous research into the species of which they are composed from every point of view. The combination of these three facts will of itself explain some defects, or even retrogressions, observable in Nitzsch s later systematic work when compared with that which he had formerly done. On the other hand some manifest improvements are introduced, and the abundance of details into which he enters in his Pterylographie render it far more instruc tive and valuable than the older performance. As an abstract of that has already been given, it may be sufficient here to point out the chief changes made in his newer arrangement. To begin with, the three great sections of Aerial, Terrestrial, and Aquatic Birds are abolished. The Accipitres &quot; are divided into two groups, Diurnal and Nocturnal ; but the first of these divisions is separated into three sections: (1) the Vultures of the New World, (2) those of the Old World, and (3) the genus Falco of Linnaeus. The &quot;Passerines,&quot; that is to say, the true Passeres, are split into eight Families, not wholly with judgment; 3 but of their taxonomy more is to be said presently. Then a new Order &quot; Picarix &quot; is instituted for the reception of the Macrochires, Cuculinse, Picinx, Psittadnsc, and Amphibolx of his old arrangement, to which are added three 4 others Caprimnlyinx, Todidae, and Lipoy/ossoe the last consisting of the genera Buceros, Upupa, and Alcedo. The association of Alcedo with the 2 Though not relating exactly to our present theme, it would be improper to dismiss Nitzsch s name without reference to hi.s extra ordinary labours in investigating the insect and other external parasites of Birds, a subject which as regards British species was subsequently elaborated by DENNY in his Monographia Anoplurorum Britannia?- (1842) and in his list of the specimens of British Anoplura in the col lection of the British Museum. 3 A short essay by Nitzsch on the general structure of the Passerines, written, it is said, in 1836, was published in 1862 (Zeitschr. Oes. Naturwisxenschaft, xix. pp. 389-408). It is probably to this essay that Prof. Burmeister refers in the Pli .rylo jraphie, (p. 102, note ; English translation, p. 7 2, note) as forming the basis of the article &quot; Passerinae &quot; which he contributed to Er.sch and Gruber s Encyklo- pridie (sect. iii. bd. xiii. pp. 139-144), and published before the Pterylographie. 4 By the numbers prefixed it would look as if there should be four new members of this Order ; but that seems to be due rather to a slip of the pen or to a printer s error.