Birds of Europe in five volumes, published between 1832 and 1837,
while in the interim (1834) appeared A Monograph of the
Ramphastidae, of which a second edition was some years later called for,
then the Icones avium, of which only two parts were published
(1837-1838), and A Monograph of the Trogonidae (1838), which also
reached a second edition. Sailing in 1838 for New South Wales,
on his return in 1840 he at once commenced the greatest of all his
works, The Birds of Australia, which was finished in 1848 in seven
volumes, to which several supplementary parts, forming another
volume, were subsequently added. In 1849 he began A Monograph
of the Trochilidae or Humming-birds extending to five volumes, the
last of which appeared in 1861, and was followed by a supplement
by Mr Salvin. A Monograph of the Odontophorinae or Partridges
of America (1850); The Birds of Asia, in seven volumes, the last
completed by Mr Sharpe (1850-1883); The Birds of Great Britain,
in five volumes (1863-1873); and The Birds of New Guinea, begun in
1875, and, after the author's death in 1881, undertaken by Mr
Sharpe, make up the wonderful tale consisting of more than forty
folio volumes, and containing more than three thousand coloured
plates. The earlier of these works were illustrated by Mrs Gould,
and the figures in them are fairly good; but those in the later,
except when (as he occasionally did) he secured the services of Mr
Wolf, are not so much to be commended. There is, it is true, a
smoothness and finish about them not often seen elsewhere; but,
as though to avoid the exaggerations of Audubon, Gould usually
adopted the tamest of attitudes in which to represent his subjects,
whereby expression as well as vivacity is wanting. Moreover, both
in drawing and in colouring there is frequently much that is untrue
to nature, so that it has not uncommonly happened for them to fail
in the chief object of all zoological plates, that of affording sure
means of recognizing specimens on comparison. In estimating the
letterpress, which was avowedly held to be of secondary importance
to the plates, we must bear in mind that, to ensure the success of
his works, it had to be written to suit a very peculiarly composed
body of subscribers. Nevertheless a scientific character was so
adroitly assumed that scientific men—some of them even ornithologists—have
thence been led to believe the text had a scientific
value, and that of a high class. However, it must also be remembered
that, throughout the whole of his career, Gould consulted the
convenience of working ornithologists by almost invariably refraining
from including in his folio works the technical description of any new
species without first publishing it in some journal of comparatively
easy access.
An ambitious attempt to produce in England a general series of coloured plates on a large scale was Louis Fraser's Zoologia Typica, Fraser. the first part of which bears date 1841-1842. Others appeared at irregular intervals until 1849, when the work, which seems never to have received the support it deserved, was discontinued. The seventy plates (forty-six of which represent birds) composing, with some explanatory letterpress, the volume, are by C. Ceusens and H. N. Turner—the latter (as his publications prove) a zoologist of much promise, who in 1851 died, a victim to his own zeal for investigation, of a wound received in dissecting. The chief object of the author, who had been naturalist to the Niger Expedition, and curator to the Museum of the Zoological Society of London, was to figure the animals contained in its gardens or described in its Proceedings, which until the year 1848 were not illustrated.
The publication of the Zoological Sketches of Joseph Wolf, from animals in the gardens of the Zoological Society of London, was Wolf. begun about 1855, with a brief text by D. W. Mitchell, at that time the Society's secretary, in illustration of them. After his death in 1859, the explanatory letterpress was rewritten by P. L. Sclater, his successor in that office, and a volume was completed in 1861. Upon this a second series was commenced, and brought to an end in 1868. Though a comparatively small number of species of birds are figured in this magnificent work (seventeen only in the first series, and twenty-two in the second), it must be mentioned here, for their likenesses are so admirably executed as to place it in regard to ornithological portraiture at the head of all others. There is not a single plate that is unworthy of the greatest of all animal painters.
Proceeding to illustrated works generally of less pretentious size, but of greater ornithological utility than the books last mentioned, which are fitter for the drawing-room than the study, we next have to consider some in which the text is not wholly subordinated to the plates, though the latter still form a conspicuous feature of the publication. First of these in point of time as well as in importance is the Nouveau recueil des planches coloriées d'oiseaux of Temminck Temminck and Langier. and Langier, intended as a sequel to the Planches enluminées of D'Aubenton before noticed, and like that work issued both in folio and quarto size. The first portion of this was published at Paris in 1820, and of its one hundred and two livraisons, which appeared with great irregularity (Ibis, 1868, p. 500), the last was issued in 1839, containing the titles of the five volumes that the whole forms, together with a “Tableau méthodique” which but indifferently serves the purpose of an index. There are six hundred plates, but the exact number of species figured (which has been computed at six hundred and sixty-one) is not so easily ascertained. Generally the subject of each plate has letterpress to correspond, but in some cases this is wanting, while on the other hand descriptions of species not figured are occasionally introduced, and usually observations on the distribution and construction of each genus or group are added. The plates, which show no improvement in execution on those of Martinet, are after drawings by Huet and Prêtre, the former being perhaps the less bad draughtsman of the two, for he seems to have had an idea of what a bird when alive looks like, though he was not able to give his figures any vitality, while the latter simply delineated the stiff and dishevelled specimens from museum shelves. Still the colouring is pretty well done, and experience has proved that generally speaking there is not much difficulty in recognizing the species represented. The letterpress is commonly limited to technical details, and is not always accurate; but it is of its kind useful, for in general knowledge of the outside of birds Temminck probably surpassed any of his contemporaries. The “Tableau méthodique” offers a convenient concordance of the old Planches enluminées and its successor, and is arranged after the system set forth by Temminck in the first volume of the second edition of his Manuel d'ornithologie, of which something must presently be said.
The Galerie des oiseaux, a rival work, with plates by Oudart, seems to have been begun immediately after the former. The Oudart. original project was apparently to give a figure and description of every species of bird; but that was soon found to be impossible; and, when six parts had been issued, with text by some unnamed author, the scheme was brought within Vieillot. practicable limits, and the writing of the letterpress was entrusted to Vieillot, who, proceeding on a systematic plan, performed his task very creditably, completing the work, which forms two quarto volumes, in 1825, the original text and fifty-seven plates being relegated to the end of the second volume as a supplement. His portion is illustrated by two hundred and ninety-nine coloured plates that, wretched as they are, have been continually reproduced in various text-books—a fact possibly due to their subjects having been judiciously selected. It is a tradition that, this work not being favourably regarded by the authorities of the Paris Museum, its draughtsman and author were refused closer access to the specimens required, and had to draw and describe them through the glass as they stood on the shelves of the cases.
In 1825 Jardine and Selby began a series of Illustrations of Ornithology, the several parts of which appeared at long and irregular Jardine and Selby. intervals, so that it was not until 1839 that three volumes containing one hundred and fifty plates were completed. Then they set about a Second Series, which, forming a single volume with fifty-three plates, was finished in 1843. These authors, being zealous amateur artists, were their own draughtsmen to the extent even of lithographing the figures. In 1828 James Wilson. Wilson (author of the article Ornithology in the 7th and 8th editions of the present work) began, under the title of Illustrations of Zoology, the publication of a series of his own drawings (which he did not, however, himself engrave) with corresponding letterpress. Of the thirty-six plates illustrating this volume, a small folio, twenty are devoted to Ornithology, and contain figures, which, it must be allowed, are not very successful, of several species rare at the time.
Though the three works last mentioned fairly come under the same category as the Planches enluminées and the Planches coloriées, Des Murs. no one of them can be properly deemed their rightful heirs. The claim to that succession was made in 1845 by Des Murs for his Iconographie ornithologique, which, containing seventy-two plates by Prévot and Oudart[1] (the latter of whom had marvellously improved in his drawings since he worked with Vieillot), was completed in 1849. Simultaneously with this Du Bus began a Du Bus. work on a plan precisely similar, the Esquisses ornithologiques, illustrated by Severeyns, which, however, stopped short in 1849 with its thirty-seventh plate, while the letterpress unfortunately does not go beyond that belonging to the twentieth. In 1866 the succession was again taken up by the Exotic Sclater and Salvin. Ornithology of Messrs Sclater and Salvin, containing one hundred plates, representing one hundred and four species, all from Central or South America, which are neatly executed by J. Smit. The accompanying letterpress is in some places copious, and useful lists of the species of various genera are occasionally subjoined, adding to the definite value of the work, which, forming one volume, was completed in 1869.
Rowley's Ornithological Miscellany in three quarto volumes, profusely illustrated, appeared between 1875 and 1878. The Rowley. contents are as varied as the authorship, and, most of the leading English ornithologists having contributed to the work, some of the papers are extremely good, while in the plates, which are in Keulemans's best manner, many rare species of birds are figured, some of them for the first time.
More recent monographs have been more exact, and some of them equally sumptuous. Amongst these may be mentioned F. E. Blaauw's Monograph of the Cranes (1897, folio); St G. Mivart's Monograph of the Lories (1898, folio); the Hon. W. Rothschild's Monograph of the Genus Casuarius (1899, quarto); R. B. Sharpe's
- ↑ On the title-page credit is given to the latter alone, but only two-thirds of the plates (from pl. 25 to the end) bear his name.
