Monograph of the Paradiseidae (1898, folio); H. Seebohm's
Monograph of the Thrushes (1900, imp. quarto); J. G. Millais' British
Surface-feeding Ducks (1902, folio); and the Hon. W. Rothschild's
Extinct Birds (1907, quarto).
Most of the works lately named, being very costly, are not easily accessible. The few next to be mentioned, being of smaller size (octavo), may be within reach of more persons, and, therefore, can be passed over in a briefer fashion without detriment. In many ways, however, they are nearly as important. Swainson's Zoological Swainson. Illustrations in three volumes, containing one hundred and eighty-two plates, whereof seventy represent birds, appeared between 1820 and 1821, and in 1829 a second series of the same was begun by him, which, extending to another three volumes, contained forty-eight more plates of birds out of one hundred and thirty-six, and was completed in 1833. All the figures were drawn by the author, who as an ornithological artist had no rival in his time. Every plate is not beyond criticism, but his worst drawings show more knowledge of bird-life than do the best of his English or French contemporaries. A work of somewhat similar character, but one in which the letterpress is of greater value, is the Lesson. Centurie zoologique of Lesson, a single volume that, though bearing the date 1830 on its title-page, is believed to have been begun in 1829,[1] and was certainly not finished until 1831. It received the benefit of Isidore Geoffroy St-Hilaire's assistance. Notwithstanding its name it only contains eighty plates, but of them forty-two, all by Prêtre and in his usual stiff style, represent birds. Concurrently with this volume appeared Lesson's Traité d'ornithologie, which is dated 1831, and may perhaps be here most conveniently mentioned. Its professedly systematic form strictly relegates it to another group of works, but the presence of an “Atlas” (also in octavo) of one hundred and nineteen plates to some extent justifies its notice in this place. Between 1831 and 1834 the same author brought out, in continuation of his Centurie, his Illustrations de zoologie with sixty plates, twenty of which represent birds. In 1832 Kittlitz began to publish some Kittlitz. Kupfertafeln zur Naturgeschichte der Vögel, in which many new species are figured; but the work came to an end with its thirty-sixth plate in the following year. In 1845 Reichenbach Reichenbach. commenced with his Praktische Naturgeschichte der Vögel the extraordinary series of illustrated publications which, under titles far too numerous here to repeat, ended in or about 1855, and are commonly known collectively as his Vollständigste Naturgeschichte der Vögel.[2] Herein are contained more than nine hundred coloured and more than one hundred uncoloured plates, which are crowded with the figures of birds, a large proportion of them reduced copies from other works, and especially those of Gould.
It now behoves us to turn to general and particularly systematic works in which plates, if they exist at all, form but an accessory to the text. These need not detain us for long, since, however well some of them may have been executed, regard being had to their epoch, and whatever repute some of them may have achieved, they are, so far as general information and especially classification is concerned, wholly obsolete, and most of them almost useless except as matters of antiquarian interest. It will be enough merely to name Duméril's Zoologie analytique (1806) and Gravenhorst's Vergleichende Übersicht des linneischen und einiger neuern zoologischen Shaw and Stephens. Systeme (1807); nor need we linger over Shaw's General Zoology, a pretentious compilation continued by Stephens. The last seven of its fourteen volumes include the Class Aves, and the first part of them appeared in 1809, but, the original author dying in 1815, when only two volumes of birds were published, the remainder was brought to an end in 1826 by his successor, who afterwards became well known as an entomologist. The engravings which these volumes contain are mostly bad copies, often of bad figures, though many are piracies from Bewick, and the whole is a most unsatisfactory performance. Of a very different kind is the next we have to notice, the Prodromus systematis mammalium et Illiger. avium of Illiger, published at Berlin in 1811, which must in its day have been a valuable little manual, and on many points it may now be consulted to advantage—the characters of the genera being admirably given, and good explanatory lists of the technical terms of ornithology furnished. The classification was quite new, and made a step distinctly in advance of anything Vieillot. that had before appeared.[3] In 1816 Vieillot published at Paris an Analyse d'une nouvelle ornithologie élémentaire, containing a method of classification which he had tried in vain to get printed before, both in Turin and in London.[4] Some of the ideas in this are said to have been taken from Illiger; but the two systems seem to be wholly distinct. Vieillot's was afterwards more fully expounded in the series of articles which he contributed between 1816 and 1819 to the second edition of the Nouveau dictionnaire d'histoire naturelle containing much valuable information. The views of neither of these systematizers pleased Temminck, who in Temminck. 1817 replied rather sharply to Vieillot in some Observations sur la classification méthodique des oiseaux, a pamphlet published at Amsterdam, and prefixed to the second edition of his Manuel d'ornithologie, which appeared in 1820, an Analyse du système général d'ornithologie. This proved a great success, and his arrangement, though by no means simple,[5] was not only adopted by many ornithologists of almost every country, but still has some adherents. The following year Ranzani of Bologna, in his Elementi Ranzani. di zoologia—a very respectable compilation—came to treat of birds, and then followed to some extent the plan of De Blainville and Merrem (concerning which much more has to be said by and by), placing the Struthious birds in an Order by Wagler. themselves. In 1827 Wagler brought out the first part of a Systema avium, in this form never completed, consisting of forty-nine detached monographs of as many genera, the species of which are most elaborately described. The arrangement he subsequently adopted for them and for other groups is to be found in his Natürliches System der Amphibien (pp. 77-128), published in 1830, and is too fanciful to require any further attention. Kaup. The several attempts at system-making by Kaup, from his Allgemeine Zoologie in 1829 to his Über Classification der Vögel in 1849, were equally arbitrary and abortive; but his Skizzirte Entwickelungs-Geschichte in 1829 must be here named, as it is so often quoted on account of the number of new genera which the peculiar views he had embraced compelled him to invent. These views he shared more or less with Vigors and Swainson, and to them attention will be immediately especially invited, while consideration of the scheme gradually developed from 1831 onward Bonaparte. by Charles Lucien Bonaparte, and still not without its influence, is deferred until we come to treat of the rise and progress of what we may term the reformed school of ornithology. Yet injustice would be done to one of the ablest of those now to be called the old masters of the science if mention were not here made of the Conspectus generum avium, begun in 1850 by the naturalist last named, with the help of Schlegel, and unfortunately interrupted by its author's death six years later.[6] G. R. Gray. The systematic publications of George Robert Gray, so long in charge of the ornithological collection of the British Museum, began with A List of the Genera of Birds published in 1840. This, having been closely, though by no means in a hostile spirit, criticized by Strickland (Ann. Nat. History, vi. p. 410; vii. pp. 26 and 159), was followed by a second edition in 1841, in which nearly all the corrections of the reviewer were adopted, and in 1844 began the publication of The Genera of Birds, beautifully illustrated—first by Mitchell and afterwards by Mr Wolf—which will always keep Gray's name in remembrance. The enormous labour required for this work seems scarcely to have been appreciated, though it remains to this day one of the most useful books in an ornithologist's library. Yet it must be confessed that its author was hardly an ornithologist, but for the accident of his calling. He was a thoroughly conscientious clerk, devoted to his duty and unsparing of trouble. However, to have conceived the idea of executing a work on so grand a scale as this—it forms three folio volumes, and contains one hundred and eighty-five coloured and one hundred and forty-eight uncoloured plates, with references to upwards of two thousand four hundred generic names—was in itself a mark of genius, and it was brought to a successful conclusion in 1849. Costly as it necessarily was, it has been of great service to working ornithologists. In 1855 Gray brought out, as one of the Museum publications, A Catalogue of the Genera and Subgenera of Birds, a handy little volume, naturally founded on the larger works. Its chief drawback is that it does not give any more reference to the authority for a generic term than the name of its inventor and the year of its application, though of course more precise information would have at least doubled the size of the book. The same deficiency became still more apparent when, between 1869 and 1871, he published his Hand-List of Genera and Species of Birds in three
- ↑ In 1828 he had brought out, under the title of Manuel d'ornithologie, two handy duodecimos which are very good of their kind.
- ↑ Technically speaking they are in quarto, but their size is so small that they may be well spoken of here. In 1879 Dr A. B. Meyer brought out an Index to them.
- ↑ Illiger may be considered the founder of the school of nomenclatural purists. He would not tolerate any of the “barbarous” generic terms adopted by other writers, though some had been in use for many years.
- ↑ The method was communicated to the Turin Academy, on 10th January 1814, and was ordered to be printed (Mém. Ac. Sc. Turin, 1813-1814, p. xxviii.); but, through the derangements of that stormy period, the order was never carried out (Mem. Accad. Sc. Torino, xxiii. p. xcvii.). The minute-book of the Linnean Society of London shows that his Prolusio was read at meetings of that Society between the 15th of November 1814 and the 21st of February 1815. Why it was not at once accepted is not told, but the entry respecting it, which must be of much later date, in the “Register of Papers” is “Published already.” It is due to Vieillot to mention these facts, as he has been accused of publishing his method in haste to anticipate some of Cuvier's views, but he might well complain of the delay in London. Some reparation has been made to his memory by the reprinting of his Analyse by the Willughby Society.
- ↑ He recognized sixteen Orders of Birds, while Vieillot had been content with five, and Illiger with seven.
- ↑ To this very indispensable work a good index was supplied in 1865 by Dr Finsch.
