An illustrated manual of British birds Author:Howard Saunders Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: INTRODUCTION. The scientific arrangement followed in this work is mainly in accordance with that of ' The List of British Birds compiled by a Committee of the... more » British Ornithologists' Union,' in which again the sequence is almost identical with that in Mr. Dresser's - Birds of Europe.' There may be differences of opinion respecting the relative position of some of the Families which make up the Order Passeres, but nearly all modern systematists in Europe and America are agreed that the highest avian development is attained in that Order the Passeres therefore—being the most specialized of birds —should occupy the first place in a descending arrangement (such as the one set forth by Mr. P. L. Sclater in -The Ibis' for 1880 and widely adopted in the Old World), or the last in a scheme of ascension from the lowest and most reptilian birds (which finds favour in the United States). As regards the Order Accipitrcs—which formerly headed the list—there is strong evidence of its affinity with the Herodiones, and any wide separation of the Vultures from the Storks appears to be inconsistent with the teachings of modern anatomical research; whereas, by following the highly-sanctioned scheme of commencing with the Passeres, we at least make some approach to uniformity of system. To that end I have subordinated my own views to those of the majority of the B.O.U. Committee respecting the positions of the Alaudidae and the Corvidae in that Order, as well as on some other unessential points. A large portion of a notice of Pts. i.-iv. in ' The Zoologist' is devoted to calling me to account for having departed from the arrangement adopted in the 4th Edition of ' Yarrell' ; though the writer must have been well aware that the above work—commenced in 1871—did not reach my hands until the latt...« less