“An Ornithological Retrospect”

Abstract

I HAVE been interested in reading “An Ornithological Retrospect,” by your correspondent, Dr. Sharpe. His reference to myself by name in the concluding paragraph is partly my excuse for troubling you with a few remarks upon this article. Dr. Sharpe, in one long breath, deplores (pleonastically) the fact that “very little anatomical work has scarcely been done” recently in ornithology, and exults over a reviewer in a “leading London paper,” who apparently took the same view—tomahawking him with the remark that “in every branch of the subject considerable progress has been made.” I think that the opinion of the minority in this case is correct, and that our knowledge of bird anatomy is progressing. But those of us who are occupied with this study have frequently to regret the ignoring of anatomical facts by systematists; this is particularly discouraging, since by far the larger proportion of papers upon bird anatomy are purely of systematic interest, dealing with the resemblances between bird and bird. Dr. Sharpe evidently feels that the British Museum Catalogues of Birds are not beyond criticism from this point of view. In one or two volumes there is a conspicuous absence of any arrangement in accordance with anatomical fact. Dr. Sharpe, therefore, is rather imprudently candid in saying that to understand these catalogues a man must be an ornithologist.