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). Fuller knowledge has shown that Macgillivray was ill-advised in laying stress on the systematic value of adaptive characters, but his contributions to anatomy were valuable, and later investigators, in particular H. Gadow and P. Chalmers Mitchell, have shown that useful systematic information can be obtained from the study of the alimentary canal. Macgillivray himself it was, apparently, who first detected the essential difference of the organs of voice presented by some of the New-World Passerines (subsequently known as Clamatores), and the earliest intimation of this seems to be given in his anatomical description of the Arkansas Flycatcher, Tyrannus verticalis, which was published in 1838 (Ornithol. Biography, iv. p. 425), though it must be admitted that he did not—because he then could not—perceive the bearing of their difference, which was reserved to be shown by the investigation of a still greater anatomist, and of one who had fuller facilities for research, and thereby almost revolutionized, as will presently be mentioned, the views of systematists as to this order of birds. There is only space here to say that the second volume of Macgillivray's work was published in 1839, and the third in 1840; but it was not until 1852 that the author, in broken health, found an opportunity of issuing the fourth and fifth. His scheme of classification, being as before stated partial, need not be given in detail. Its great merit is that it proved the necessity of combining another and hitherto much-neglected factor in any natural arrangement, though vitiated as so many other schemes have been by being based wholly on one class of characters.
But a bolder attempt at classification was that made in 1838 by Blyth in the New Series (Charlesworth's) of the Magazine of Blyth. Natural History (ii. pp. 256-268, 314-319, 351-361, 420-426, 589-601; iii. pp. 76-84). It was limited, however, to what he called Insessores, being the group upon which that name had been conferred by Vigors (Trans. Linn. Society, xiv. p. 405) in 1823, with the addition, however, of his Raptores, and it will be unnecessary to enter into particulars concerning it, though it is as equally remarkable for the insight shown by the author into the structure of birds as for the philosophical breadth of his view, which comprehends almost every kind of character that had been at that time brought forward. It is plain that Blyth saw, and perhaps he was the first to see it, that geographical distribution was not unimportant in suggesting the affinities and differences of natural groups (pp. 258, 259); and, undeterred by the precepts and practice of the hitherto dominant English school of Ornithologists, he declared that “anatomy, when aided by every character which the manner of propagation, the progressive changes, and other physiological data supply, is the only sure basis of classification.” He was quite aware of the taxonomic value of the vocal organs of some groups of birds, presently to be especially mentioned, and he had himself ascertained the presence and absence of caeca in a not inconsiderable number of groups, drawing thence very justifiable inferences. He knew at least the earlier investigations of L'Herminier, and, though the work of Nitzsch, even if he had ever heard of it, must (through ignorance of the language in which it was written) have been to him a sealed book, he had followed out and extended the hints already given by Temminck as to the differences which various groups of birds display in their moult. With all this it is not surprising to find, though the fact has been generally overlooked, that Blyth's proposed arrangement in many points anticipated conclusions that were subsequently reached, and were then regarded as fresh discoveries. It is proper Bartlett. to add that at this time the greater part of his work was carried on in conjunction with A. Bartlett, the superintendent of the London Zoological Society's Gardens, and that, without his assistance, opportunities, slender as they were compared with those which others have enjoyed, must have been still smaller. Considering the extent of their materials, which was limited to the bodies of such animals as they could obtain from dealers and the several menageries that then existed in or near London, the progress made in what has since proved to be the right direction is very wonderful. It is obvious that both these investigators had the genius for recognizing and interpreting the value of characters; but their labours do not seem to have met with much encouragement; and a general arrangement of the class laid by Blyth before the Zoological Society at this time[1] does not appear in its publications. The scheme could hardly fail to be a crude performance—a fact which nobody would know better than its author; but it must have presented much that was objectionable to the opinions then generally prevalent. Its line to some extent may be partly made out—very clearly, for the matter of that, so far as its details have been published in the series of papers to which reference has been given—and some traces of its features are probably preserved in his Catalogue of the specimens of birds in the museum of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, which, after several years of severe labour, made its appearance at Calcutta in 1849; but, from the time of his arrival in India, the onerous duties imposed upon Blyth, together with the want of sufficient books of reference, seem to have hindered him from seriously continuing his former researches, which, interrupted as they were, and born out of due time, had no appreciable effect on the views of systematisers generally.
Next must be noticed a series of short treatises communicated by Johann Friedrich Brandt, between the years 1836 and 1839, to Brandt. the Academy of Sciences of St Petersburg, and published in its Mémoires. In the year last mentioned the greater part of these was separately issued under the title of Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Naturgeschichte der Vögel. Herein the author first assigned anatomical reasons for rearranging the order Anseres of Linnaeus and Natatores of Illiger, who, so long before as 1811, had proposed a new distribution of it into six families, the definitions of which, as was his wont, he had drawn from external characters only. Brandt now retained very nearly the same arrangement as his predecessor; but, notwithstanding that he could trust to the firmer foundation of internal framework, he took at least two retrograde steps. First he failed to see the great structural difference between the penguins (which Illiger had placed as a group, Impennes, of equal rank to his other families) and the auks, divers and grebes, Pygopodes—combining all of them to form a “Typus” (to use his term) Urinatores; and secondly he admitted among the Natatores, though as a distinct “Typus” Podoidae, the genera Podoa and Fulica, which are now known to belong to the Rallidae—the latter indeed (see Coot) being but very slightly removed from the moorhen (q.v.). At the same time he corrected the error made by Illiger in associating the Phalaropes with these forms, rightly declaring their relationship to Tringa (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 consideration 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.
In the same year (1839) another slight advance was made in the classification of the true Passerines. Keyserling and Blasius briefly Keyserling and Blasius. pointed out in the Archiv für Naturgeschichte (v. pp. 332-334) that, while all the other birds provided with perfect song-muscles had the “planta” or hind part of the “tarsus” covered with two long and undivided horny plates, the larks (q.v.) 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 passerines which have not the singing-apparatus, and also in the hoopoe (q.v.). The importance of this singular but superficial departure from the normal structure has been so needlessly 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
- ↑ An abstract is contained in the Minute-book of the Scientific Meetings of the Zoological Society, 26th June and 10th July 1838. The class was to contain fifteen orders, but only three were dealt with in any detail.
