Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/34

ORNITHOLOGY VHer- ninier ind sidore leoffroy Jt- ililaire. nearly every recent authority agrees with him ; out of them, how ever, he chose the Thrushes and Warblers to stand iirst as his ideal " Centrum a selection which, though in the opinion of the pre sent writer erroneous, is still largely followed. The points at issue between Cuvier and Etienne Geoffrey St-Hilaire before mentioned naturally attracted the atten tion of L HERMINIER, who in 1836 presented to the French Academy the results of his researches into the mode of growth of that bone which in the adult Bird he had already studied to such good purpose. Unfortunately the full account of his diligent investigations was never published. We can best judge of his labours from an abstract printed in the Comptes JRendus (iii. pp. 12 -20) and reprinted in the Annales des Sciences Naturdles (ser. 2, vi. pp. 107-115), and from the report upon them by ISIDORE GEOFFROY ST-HILAIRE, to whom with others they were referred. This report is contained in the Comptes Rendus for the following year (iv. pp. 565-574), and is very critical in its character. It were useless to conjecture why the whole memoir never appeared, as the reporter recommended that it should ; but, whether, as he suggested, the author s observations failed to establish the theories he advanced or not, the loss of his observations in an extended form is greatly to be regretted, for no one seems to have continued the investigations he began and to some extent carried out ; while, from his residence in Guadeloupe, he had peculiar advantages in studying certain types of Birds not generally available, his remarks on them could not fail to be valuable, quite irrespective of the interpretation he was led to put upon them. L Herminier arrived at the conclusion that, so far from there being only two or three different modes by which the process of ossification in the sternum is carried out, the number of different modes is very considerable almost each natural group of Birds having its own. The principal theory which he hence conceived himself justified in propounding was that instead oijive being (as had been stated) the maximum number of centres of ossification in the sternum, there are no fewer than nine entering into the composition of the perfect sternum of Birds in general, though in every species some of these nine are wanting, whatever be the condition of development at the time of examination. These nine theoretical centres or " pieces " L Herminier deemed to be disposed in three transverse series (rangees), namely the anterior or " prosternal," the middle or "mesosternal," and the posterior or "metasternal" each series consisting of three portions, one median piece and two side-pieces. At the same time he seems, accord ing to the abstract of his memoir, to have made the some what contradictory assertion that sometimes there are more than three pieces in each series, and in certain groups of Birds as many as six. 1 It would occupy more space than can here be allowed to give even the briefest abstract of the numerous observations which follow the statement of his theory and on which it professedly rests. They extend to more than a score of natural groups of Birds, and nearly each of them presents some peculiar characters. Thus of the first series of pieces he says that when all exist they may be developed simultaneously, or that the two side-pieces may precede the median, or again that the median may precede the side-pieces according to the group of Birds, but that the second mode is much the commonest. The same variations are observable in the second or middle series, but its side-pieces are said to exist in all groups of Birds without exception. As to the third or posterior series, when it is complete the three constituent pieces are developed almost simultaneously; 1 We shall perhaps he justified in assuming that this apparent incon sistency, and others which present themselves, would be explicable if the whole memoir with the necessary illustrations had been published. but its median piece is said often to originate in two, which soon unite, especially when the side-pieces are wanting. By way of examples of L Herminicr s observa tions, what he says of the two groups that had been the subject of Cuvier s and the elder Geoffrey s contest may be mentioned. In the Galling? the five well-known pieces or centres of ossification are said to consist of the two side-pieces of the second or middle series, and the three of the posterior. On two occasions, however, there was found in addition, what may be taken for a representation of the first series, a little " noyau " situated between the coracoids forming the only instance of all three seri.es. being present in the same Bird. As regards the Ducks, L Herminier agreed with Cuvier that there are commonly only two centres of ossification the side-pieces of the middle series ; but as these grow to meet one another a distinct median " noy(m" also of the same series, some times appears, which soon forms a connexion with each of them. In the Ostrich and its allies no trace of this median centre of ossification ever occurs ; but with these, exceptions its existence is invariable in all other Birds. Here the matter must be left ; but it is undoubtedly a subject which demands further investigation, and naturally any future investigator of it should consult the abstract of L Herminier s memoir and the criticisms upon it of the younger Geoff roy. Hitherto it will have been seen that our present busi ness has lain wholly in Germany and France, for, as is elsewhere explained, the chief ornithologists of Britain were occupying themselves at this time in a very useless way not but that there were several distinguished men in this country who were paying due heed at this time to the internal structure of Birds, and some excellent descrip tive memoirs on special forms had appeared from their pens, to say nothing of more than one general treatise on ornithic anatomy. 2 Yet no one in Britain seems to have attempted to found any scientific arrangement of Birds on other than external characters until, in 1837, WILLIAM Mac - MACGILLIVRAY issued the first volume of his History o/gillivra 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 diver sity 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). Experience has again and again exposed the fallacy of this last conclusion, but it is no disparag- ment of its author, writing nearly fifty years ago, to .say that in this passage, as well as in others that might bo quoted, he was greater as an anatomist than as a logician. 2 Sir Richard Owen s celebrated article "Avcs," in Todd s Cyclo- ptedia nf Anatomy and Physiology (i. pp. 265-358), appeared in 1836, and, as giving a general view of the structure of Birds, needs no praise here ; but its object was not to establish a classification, or throw light especially on systematic arrangement. So far from that being the case, its distinguished author was content to adopt, as he tells us, the arrangement proposed by Kirby in the Screnlh Bridrjeivater Treatise (ii. pp. 445-474), being that, it is true, of an estimable zoologist, but of one who had no special knowledge of Ornithology. Indeed it is, as the latter says, that of Linnaeus, improved by Cuvier, with an additional modification of Illiger s all these three authors having totally ignored any but external characters. Yet it was regarded "as being the one which facilitates the expression of the leading anatomical differences which obtain in the class of Birds, and which therefore may be considered as the most natural."