Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Transactions of the Linnean Society, Vol. 16: Remarks on the Comparative Anatomy of Certain Birds of Cuba, With a View to Their Respective Places in the System of Nature or to Their Relations With Other Animals
M. Cuvier, that the natural history of an animal is the know ledge of every thing that regards that_animal, - then natural History, as a' science, is only studied in effect when we are engaged in the pursuit of the natural system. It is not, there fore, so much the difference between organs, that we ought to lay stress upon, as the mode in which they vary; from which truth arises another, namely, that in those groups where the variation of an organ is at its maximum, - or, in other Words, Where the differences between the various states of an organ are the most, - there such an organ is of less consequence as a principle of division characterizing large groups for it is the mode of vari ation that we ought to attend to. Thus in the Natatores, the number of cervical vertebrae is at its maximum of variation; in the Grallatores, the form of the beak is at its maximum of variation; in the Rasores, the number of lumbar vertebrae; in the Insessores, the economy and nature of food - and so on. The primary divisions, therefore, of these several large groups of birds, will not depend upon the above respective circumstances, although by tracing the variation of them we are enabled to apply corrections to the place that may have been assigned each species from other considerations, as close to its next of kin in natural affinity.
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