GAME BIRDS 209

including the grouse, ptarmigan, pea-fowl, phea-
sants, partridges, curassows, turkeys, and the mound-
building megapodes. Following these is the semi-
reptilian hoatzin, and then the rails, crakes, coots,
and moor-hens, leading on easily to the cranes and
bustards, and so, by way of the stone-curlew, to the
numerous plovers, among them the lapwing, not-
withstanding the tens of thousands of its eggs that are
annually collected for food. : Included in this group
are the turnstone and oyster-catcher, the avocet and
stilt, the phalaropes, the woodcock and snipes, the
sandpipers, godwits, and curlews. A wider gap than
usual marks off the square-tailed gulls and fork-tailed
terns, and pirate-gulls or skuas. Following these come
the pygopodes, comprising the razorbills, auks, guille-
mots, puffin, divers, and grebes ; then come the petrels
and then the South African tinamous, which used to
be classed with the partridges, then ranged with the
bustards, and are now at the foot of the carinate list,
owing to their affinities with the rheas and emus.

At the bottom they are likely to remain, although
there will probably be a considerable changing of
places among the groups above them when a definite
basis of classification is at last agreed upon. The
mammals, as we have seen, have been sorted out to a
large extent on their dental formule and the structure
of the skull. ‘Theskull and face, as Kitchen Parker
said,‘ governs the whole body as it were ; every other
part of the organism corresponds to what is observable
there. The jaws are an index to the animal’s food,
the brain-case is a guide to the animal’s intelligence.’
It would seem, therefore, as though the final classifi-

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