It was formerly classed with the rails, and in
popular books of Natural History still keeps its place with them. "Now
the rail-tribe," says Professor Parker, speaking on this very matter,
"has for a long time been burdened (on paper) with a very false army
list. Everything alive that has had the misfortune to be possessed of
large unwieldy feet has been added to this feeble-minded cowardly group,
until it has become a mixed multitude with discordant voices and with
manners and customs having no consonance or relation." He takes the
screamer from the rail-tribe and classes it with the geese (as also does
Professor Huxley), and concludes his study with these words:--"Amongst
living birds there is not one possessing characters of higher interest,
none that I am acquainted with come nearer, in some important points, to
the lizard; and there are parts of the organization which make it very
probable that it is one of the nearest living relations of the
marvellous _Archaeopteryx_"--an intermediate form between birds and
reptiles belonging to the Upper Jurassic period.
The screamer's right to dwell with the geese has not been left
unchallenged. The late Professor Garrod finds that "from considerations
of pterylosis, visceral anatomy, myology, and osteology the screamer
cannot be placed along with the Anserine birds." He finds that in some
points it resembles the ostrich and rhea, and concludes: "It seems
therefore to me that, summing these results, the screamer must have
sprung from the primary avian stock as an independent offshoot at much
the same time as did most of the other important families.
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