In 1767 there was issued at Paris a book entitled L'Histoire naturelle éclaircie dans une de ses parties principales, l'ornithologie. This was the work of Salerne, published after his death, and is often spoken of as being a mere translation of Ray's Synopsis, but a vast amount of fresh matter, and mostly of good quality, is added.
The success of Edwards's very respectable work seems to have provoked competition, and in 1765, at the instigation of Buffon, the younger d'Aubenton began the publication known as the Planches enluminéez d'histoire naturelle, which appearing in forty-two parts was not completed till 1780, when the plates[1] it contained reached the number of 1008—all coloured, as its title intimates, and nearly all representing birds. This enormous work was subsidized by the French government; and, though the figures are utterly devoid of artistic merit, they display the species they are intended to depict with sufficient approach to fidelity to ensure recognition in most cases without fear of error, which in the absence of any text is no small praise.[2]
But Buffon was not content with merely causing to be published this unparalleled set of plates. He seems to have regarded the work just named as a necessary precursor to his own labours in ornithology. His Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière, was begun in 1749, and in 1770 he brought out, with the assistance of Guénau de Montbeillard,[3] the first volume of his great Histoire naturelle des oiseaux. Buffon was the first man who formed any theory that may be called reasonable of the geographical distribution of animals. He proclaimed the variability of species in opposition to the views of Linnaeus as to their fixity, and moreover supposed that this variability arose in part by degradation.[4] Taking his labours as a whole, there cannot be a doubt that he enormously enlarged the purview of naturalists, and, even if limited to birds, that, on the completion of his work upon them in 1783, ornithology stood in a very different position from that which it had before occupied.
Great as were the services of Buffon to ornithology in one direction, those of a wholly different kind rendered by John Latham. Latham must not be overlooked. In 1781 he began a work the practical utility of which was immediately recognized. This was his General Synopsis of Birds, and, though formed generally on the model of Linnaeus, greatly diverged in some respects therefrom. The classification was modified, chiefly on the old lines of Willughby and Ray, and certainly for the better; but no scientific nomenclature was adopted, which, as the author subsequently found, was a change for the worse. His scope was co-extensive with that of Brisson, but Latham did not possess the inborn faculty of picking out the character wherein one species differs from another. His opportunities of becoming acquainted with birds were hardly inferior to Brisson's, for during Latham's long lifetime there poured in upon him countless new discoveries from all parts of the world, but especially from the newly-explored shores of Australia and the islands of the Pacific Ocean. The British Museum had been formed, and he had access to everything it contained in addition to the abundant materials afforded him by the private museum of Sir Ashton Lever.[5] Latham entered, so far as the limits of his work would allow, into the history of the birds he described, and this with evident zest whereby he differed from his French predecessor; but the number of cases in which he erred as to the determination of his species must be very great, and not infrequently the same species is described more than once. His Synopsis was finished in 1785; two supplements were added in 1787 and 1802,[6] and in 1790 he produced an abstract of the work under the title of Index Ornithologicus, wherein he assigned names on the Linnaean method to all the species described. Not to recur again to his labours, it may be said here that between 1821 and 1828 he published at Winchester, in eleven volumes, an enlarged edition of his original work, entitling it A General History of Birds; but his defects as a compiler, which had been manifest before, rather increased with age, and the consequences were not happy.[7]
About the time that Buffon was bringing to an end his studies of birds, Mauduyt undertook to write the Ornithologie of the Encyclopédie méthodique—a comparatively easy task, considering the recent works of his fellow-countrymen on that subject, and finished in 1784. Here it requires no further comment, especially as a new edition was called for in 1790, the ornithological portion of which was begun by Bonnaterre, who, however, had only finished three hundred and twenty pages of it when he lost his life in the French Revolution; and the work thus arrested was continued by Vieillot under the slightly changed title of Tableau encyclopédique et méthodique des trois règnes de la Nature—the Ornithologie forming volumes four to seven, and not completed till 1823. In the former edition Mauduyt had taken the subjects alphabetically; but here they are disposed according to an arrangement, with some few modifications, furnished by d'Aubenton, which is extremely shallow and unworthy of consideration.
Several other works bearing upon ornithology in general, but of less importance than most of those just named, belong to this period. Among others may be mentioned the Genera of Birds by Thomas Pennant, first printed at Edinburgh in 1773, but best knoivn by the edition which appeared in London in 1781; the Elementa Ornithologica and Museum Ornithologicum of Schäffer, published at Ratisbon in 1774 and 1784 respectively; Peter Brown's New Illustrations of Zoology in London in 1776; Hermann's Tabulae Affinitatum Animalium at Strasburg in 1783, followed posthumously in 1804 by his Observationes Zoologicae; Jacquin's Beytraege zur Geschichte der Voegel at Vienna in 1784, and in 1790 at the same place the larger work of Spalowsky with nearly the same title; Sparrman's Museum Carlsonianum at Stockholm from 1786 to 1789; and in 1794 Hayes's Portraits of rare and curious Birds from the menagery of Child the banker at Osterley near London. The same draughtsman (who had in 1775 produced a History of British Birds) in 1822 began another series of Figures of rare and curious Birds.[8]
The practice of Brisson, Buffon, Latham and others of neglecting to name after the Linnaean fashion the species they described gave great encouragement to compilation, and led to what has proved to be of some inconvenience to modern ornithologists. In 1773 P. L. S. Müller brought out at Nuremberg a German translation of the Systema Naturae, completing it in 1776 by a Supplement containing a list of animals thus described, which had hitherto been technically anonymous, with diagnoses and names on the Linnaean model. In 1783 Boddaert printed at Utrecht a Table des planches enluminéez,[9] in which he attempted to refer every species of bird figured in that extensive series to its proper Linnaean genus, and to assign it a scientific name if it did not already possess one. In like manner in 1786, Scopoli—already the author of a little book published at Leipzig in 1769 under the title of Annus I. Historico-naturalis, in which are described many birds, mostly from his
- ↑ They were drawn and engraved by Martinet, who himself began in 1787 a Histoire des oiseaux with small coloured plates which have some merit, but the text is worthless.
- ↑ Between 1767 and 1776 there appeared at Florence a Storia Naturale degli Uccelli, in five folio volumes, containing a number of ill-drawn and ill-coloured figures from the collection of Giovanni Gerini, an ardent collector who died in 1751, and therefore must be acquitted of any share in the work, which, though sometimes attributed to him, is that of certain learned men who did not happen to be ornithologists (cf. Savi, Ornitologia Toscana, i. Introduzione, p. v.).
- ↑ He retired on the completion of the sixth volume, and thereupon Buffon associated Bexon with himself.
- ↑ See St George Mivart's address to the Section of Biology, Rep. Brit. Association (Sheffield Meeting, 1879), p. 356.
- ↑ In 1792 Shaw began the Museum Leverianum in illustration of this collection, which was finally dispersed by sale, and what is known to remain of it found its way to Vienna. Of the specimens in the British Museum described by Latham it is to be feared that scarcely an exist. They were probably very imperfectly prepared.
- ↑ A German translation by Bechstein subsequently appeared.
- ↑ He also prepared for publication a second edition of his Index Ornithologicus, but this was never printed, and the manuscript came into A. Newton's possession.
- ↑ The Naturalist's Miscellany or Vivarium Naturale, in English and Latin, of Shaw and Nodder, the former being the author, the latter the draughtsman and engraver, was begun in 1789 and carried on till Shaw's death, forming twenty-four volumes. It contains figures of more than 280 birds, but very poorly executed. In 1814 a sequel, The Zoological Miscellany, was begun by Leach, Nodder continuing to do the plates. This was completed in 1817, and forms three volumes with 149 plates, 27 of which represent birds.
- ↑ Of this work only fifty copies were printed, and it is one of the rarest known to the ornithologist. Only two copies are believed to exist in England, one in the British Museum, the other in private hands. It was reprinted in 1874 by Mr Tegetmeier.
