| SOME OF THE "OUTLIERS" AMONG BIRDS. |
By R. W. SHUFELDT, M. D.
AS in all other departments of biology, the classification of birds was not placed upon a rational basis until midsummer of the year 1858. It was at that time that Darwin and Wallace demonstrated the principles of the law of organic evolution, and gave to the world of science their views upon it and the results of their labors. Prior to their day, when a new form of bird came to the hands of the ornithologist, he considered his duty done, in so far as classification was concerned, after he had generically and specifically christened it, placed it in the family and order where it apparently belonged, and, finally, published its description. Species were thought to be immutable, and consequently the questions of morphology, affinity, and geographical distribution meant little or nothing. If the bird was a duck, with the ducks it went; if a sparrow, then with the sparrows, and so on. Ever and anon, however, a bird form would come to hand that could not be fit with exactness into any of the set and prescribed groups. When this was the case, one author would, for given reasons of his own, place it in this genus, family, and order; while another, for reasons apparently quite as good, would array it elsewhere. Thus these perplexing species were, by one ornithologist or another, tossed about from group to group, and ,there was no unanimity of opinion as to where they really did belong. This is not at all surprising when we come to consider the views of creation and of Nature that prevailed in the early part of the present century. It was thought by many that birds were created for the admiration of man, and when they sang they sang for man's amusement, and in glorification of their creator. Some very curious notions were entertained in regard to the meager examples of fossil birds known in those days, and the causes for the extinction of existing species were often considered to be "beyond the scope of human reason."
All this and many other crude ideas upon the subject were completely revolutionized when the laws of evolution came to be known. With it came the most remarkable revelation, and the entire science of ornithology passed, as it were, through a transformation scene, and came at once to be regarded from an entirely different point of view. "Classification," as Newton has said, "assumed a wholly different aspect. It had up to that time been little more than a shuffling of cards, the ingenious arrangement of counters in a pretty pattern. Henceforward it was to be the serious study of the workings of Nature in producing the beings we see around us from beings more or less unlike them, that had
