Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XII.djvu/722

 708 ORNITHOLOGY birds according as the young are or are not fed by the parents, proposed by Oken, was adopted by Sundevall (Konglik Vetenskaps-Academiens Handlingar, Stockholm, for years 1835 and 1843), who also used the position of the hind toe and the powers of song in his classification. His sections are : A. Aves altrices, which nour- ish their young in the nest, having either the thumb or the external toe turned back and en- tirely resting on the ground. These comprise the divisions or legions : I. Volucres (passeres of Cuvier), typical flying birds, with the thumb only turned back, containing the passer es and oscines (singers). II. Gressores or walkers, containing the swallows and humming birds, woodpeckers, parrots, cuckoos, kingfishers, owls, hawks, guans, and pigeons. B. Aves prcecoces, whose young seek their own food soon after birth, having the thumb elevated or absent. III. Cursores, runners, the pheasants and grouse, the ostrich family, bustards, her- ons, storks, rails, and sandpipers. IV. Nata- tores or swimmers, with the femur and base of tibia included under skin of abdomen, inclu- ding the gulls and petrels, pelicans and gan- nets, ducks, loons, guillemots, and penguins. Keyserling and Blasius ( Wirbelthiere Euro- pas, Brunswick, 1840) make the six orders rapaces, scansores, oscines, gallinacecB, gralla- tores, and natatores. Though Cuvier long before had drawn attention to the peculiar muscular apparatus of the larynx in true sing- ing birds, and to its inferior development or absence in others, J. Milller (Berlin "Trans- actions," 1845) first laid stress on its impor- tance as an element in classification; and on this and on corresponding external characters, Oabanis, and after him Burmeister (Thiere Brasiliens, Vogel, Berlin, 1856), divided the insessores into strisores, clamatores, and oscines, According to Oabanis, the fusion of all the scutellaa of the tarsus into a continuous enve- lope or " boot," without indication of divisions, is the type of the highest bird, and the posi- tion of the families and genera in the scale is high according to their approach to it and to the reduction in size of the first quill. Oaba- nis (ArcMv far NaturgescMcJite, Berlin, 1847) makes the ten orders of oscines, clamatores (crying birds, like shrikes, rollers, and king- fishers), strisores (having no power of modu- lating the voice, like swallows and goatsuck- ers), scansores, columbce, raptatores, rasores, cursores, grallatores, natatores ; the first four orders compose a subclass named insessores by Bonaparte in his catalogue of 1842. Prince 0. L. Bonaparte (Comptes rendus, Oct. 31, 1853) constructed a table in which the two great subclasses, altrices and prcecoces, are made with reference to whether the young require to be fed by the parents. Yan der Hoeven (" Hand- book of Zoology," English translation, 1857) makes the following six orders: natatores, grallatores, gallince, scansores or zygodactyli, passerini (ambulatores of Illiger and aniso- dactyli of Vieillot), and raptatores. Prof. S. F. Baird (" Pacific Eailroad Survey," vol. ix., Washington, 1858) adopts a classification chief- ly from Keyserling and Blasius, Cabanis, Bona- parte, and Burmeister. Prof. Richard Owen ("Anatomy of Vertebrates," vols. i. and ii., London, 1866) retains with slight modification the orders as adopted by Gray, with the excep- tion of columba, which he reunites with ra- sores, and passeres, which he separates into two distinct orders, the volitores (swifts, goatsuck- ers, bee-eaters, humming birds, kingfishers) and cantores (flycatchers, warblers, thrushes, finch- es, crows, swallows, creepers). The raptores, scansores^ volitores, and cantores constitute his first section, the altrices, while the remaining orders, rasores, cursores, grallatores, and nata- tores, are included in the second section, the prcecoces. A third section, the uroioni, is add- ed, of which the extinct archceopteryx forms the type. The classification of Prof. Huxley, as put forth in his " Classification of Animals " (London, 1869) and "Anatomy of Vertebrated Animals " (1871), departs widely from any of the foregoing, and will probably meet with but little favor among present ornithologists. It is founded mainly upon the characters of the sternum (as in the classification of De Blainville) and vomer, circumstances which scarcely appear of sufficient significance to serve as a basis in a natural classification. Huxley divides birds into three primary groups, the saururce, ratitce, and carinatcB, the first of which corresponds with the uroioni of Owen. The ratitce and carinatcB are respectively characterized by the absence and presence of a keel, the former comprising the kiwis, moas, cassowaries, and ostriches. The carinata are further subdi- vided into four secondary groups, founded upon the relative position and structure of the bones entering into the formation of the palate, which are in turn resolved into 20 alliances, to each of which the termination morphce is ap- pended; e. g., geranomorphcB, the cranes, and coracomorphcB, the passerines. The arrange- ment is as follows: I., dromceognathce, with one alliance (the tinamous) ; II., schizognathce, with nine alliances (the plovers, gulls, penguins, cranes, hemipods, fowls, sand grouse, pigeons, and hoazins) ; III., agithognathce, with three al- liances, the passerines, swifts, and woodpeckers ; IV., desmognathce, with seven alliances (birds of prey, parrots, coccygomorphcB, including the cuckoos, kingfishers, and trogons, the anserine birds, flamingoes, storks, and cormorants). No department of zoology has been so extensively and elegantly illustrated as that of ornitholo- gy ; reference may be made to the figures in the works of Sloane, Catesby, Seba r Edwards, Albinus, Brisson, Sepp, Browne, Latham, Pen- nant, Hardwicke, Bewick, Donovan, Lewin, Shaw, Jardine and Selby, Buffon, Desmarest, Le Vaillant, Temminck, Spix, Vieillot, Rup- pel, Audebert, Horsfield, Lesson, Swainson, Gray, Gould ; and in America to those of Wilson, Bonaparte, Audubon, De Kay, Cassin, Baird, and Brewer; to the "Proceedings of