Herein he divided the class A y es into two subclasses, to which he applied the names of Insessores and Grallatores (hitherto used by their inventors Vigors and Illiger in a different sense), in the latter work relying chiefly for this division on characters which had not before been used by any systematist, namely that in the former group monogamy generally prevailed and the helpless nestlings were fed by their parents, while the latter group were mostly polygamous, and the chicks at birth were active and capable of feeding themselves.
Newton accepted the three subclasses of Huxley, Saururae, Ratitae and Carinitae, and made a series of cautious but critical observations on the minor divisions of the Carinates.
In 1816, de Blainville, 4 adopting Latreille's view, divided the Linnaean Amphibia into Squamiferes and Nudipelliferes, or Amphibiens; though he offered an alternative arrangement, in which the class Reptiles is preserved and divided into two subclasses, the Ornithoides and the Ichthyoides.
Eichler, attempted to remove this disadvantage which since the time of Jussieu had characterized the French system, and in 1883 grouped the Dicotyledons in two subclasses.
Existing mammals may be primarily divided into three main groups, or subclasses, of which the second and third are much more closely related to one another than is either of them to the first.
