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Show 292 MR. H. SCHERREN ON [Apr. 21, April 21, 1903. Dr. H e n r y W o o dw a r d , F.R.S., Vice-President, in the Chair. The Secretary read the following report on the additions made to the Society's Menagerie in March 1903 :- The registered additions to the Society's Menagerie during the month of March were 67 in number. Of these 14 were acquired by presentation, 43 were received on deposit, and 10 in exchange. The total number of departures during the same period, by death and removals, was 89. The following papers were read :- 1. Linnaeus and Hunter on Feather-Tracts. By H e n r y S c h e r r e n , F.Z.S. [Received Marcli 12, 1903.] (Text-figure 49.) The credit of using the feather-tracts of birds as a means of classifica tion belongs undoubtedly to Nitzscli, whose results, edited after his death, by Burmeister, were published at Halle in 1840 under the title 4 Pterylographie'. An English edition, translated by W. S. Dallas and edited by Dr. Sclater, was brought out by the Bay Society in 1867. Pterylosis, or the distribution of these feather-tracts, is, according to Prof. Newton, " of prime taxonomic importance in Ornithology, though more in the investigation of small than of large groups." This also seems to have been the opinion of Nitzscli himself, who, however, was not aware that anything at all had been done even in noting the existence of such tracts and of the featherless spaces which he called cipteria. In his Introduction he says :- I majr, therefore, flatter myself with the hope of awakening the interest of naturalists by the announcement of my new results, and, b}r the enumeration and detailed description of the feathered regions of the bodies of birds to which I give the name of feather-tracts {pterylce, Federnjiuren), of proving that these, new and surprising as they ma}' appear to manj' on the first glance at my figures, really furnish equall}'- significant and important characters for the certain and natural discrimination of the families of birds. Professor Newton (‘ Diet. Birds,' Introd. p. 63, note 1) says that the only men before Nitzsch's time who seem to have noticed feather-tracts were the great John Hunter and the accurate |
