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Show 1866.] PROF. W. LILLJEBORG ON THE CLASS OF BIRDS. 5 such as might be referable to the adaptation of the Dodo to a terrestrial life and to different food and habits. This paper will be published entire in the Society's 'Transactions.' The following papers were read :- 1. Outlines of a Systematic Review of the Class of Birds. By Professor W . L I L L J E B O R G , of Upsala, F.M.Z.S. Literature.-We may particularly mention Chr. L. Nitzsch*, C. J. Sundevallf, G. R. Gray%, J. Cabanis§, and C. L. Bonap&ii°H. among those that of late years have devoted their attention to the classification of birds. John Mullerl" has given an important contribution to this classification by his treatise on the apparatus of singing in the larynx inferior in a great number of Passeres. The contribution given by Nitzsch certainly contains only a very short and incomplete review of the class of birds ; but it has notwithstanding a particular scientific value from its attracting attention to the importance that the carotides communes of the birds have in their classification. The ornithological system given by Sundevall has the merit of being based upon a careful and particular examination of the exterior characters of the birds, and of, for the first time, calling attention to the importance of the wing-coverts in classification, and exhibits a correct idea of the designating characters in the nature of the birds. The structure of the wings generally has been minutely described in the treatise on these organs, and its importance as regards classification held forth. As the wings must be considered to be of the highest importance to a bird, being among those parts that indeed make him a bird, it is natural that a system in which the structure of the wings has been considered should be preferable to any other where the wings have been neglected, or this subject but slightly touched upon, without any minute examination of their structure. The above-mentioned author has, in his ' Svenska Foglarna,' observed the muscular structure of the feet as important in classification, after having previously, for the first time, called attention to the same at the meeting of naturalists in Stockholm in 1851. * Observationes de Avium arteria carotide communi. Hala?, 1829. (Appendix to a programme by Prosector Fridericus Blumius Ictus.) t Ornithologiskt system (Transactions of the Royal Academy of Science of Sweden, for the year 1835 (printed 1836), p. 43). Over foglarnas wingar (ibid. for the year 1843 (printed 1844), p. 303). Svenska foglarna, 1856. \ A List of the Genera of Birds (London, 1841). The Genera of Birds (London, 1844-49). § Ornithologische Notizen (Wiegmann's Archiv fur Naturgeschichte, 1847, vol. i. pp. 18G and 308). Museum Heineanum (Halberstadt, 1850-63). II Conspectus generum avium (Leyden, 1850-57); Conspectus systematis or-nithologife (Annates des Science Naturelles, 1857?); Tableaux paralleliques des ordres Linneens, Anseres, Gralhe, et Grallinae (Paris, 1850) (Extract from Comptes Rendus des Seances de l'Academie des Sciences); besides several other treatises in different magazines. % Abhandlungen der konigl. Akad. der Wissenschafteu zu Berlin, 1847, p. 321. |