Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/14

OKNITHOLOGY Belou. of Pierre BELON S (BELLONius) Jlistoire de la nature des Oyseaiuc. Gesner brought an amount of erudition, hitherto unequalled, to bear upon his subject ; and, making due allow ance for the times in which he wrote, his judgment must in most respects be deemed excellent. In his work, however, there is little that can be called systematic treatment. Like nearly all his predecessors since ^Elian, he adopted an alphabetical arrangement, 1 though this was not too pedanti cally preserved, and did not hinder him from placing together the kinds of Birds which he supposed (and gene rally supposed rightly) to have the most resemblance to that one whose name, being best known, was chosen for the headpiece (as it were) of his particular theme, thus recog nizing to some extent the principle of classification. 2 Belon, with perhaps less book-learning than his contemporary, was evidently no mean scholar, and undoubtedly had more practical knowledge of Birds their internal as well as external structure. Hence his work, written in French, contains a far greater amount of original matter ; and his personal observations made in many countries, from England to Egypt, enabled him to avoid most of the puerilities which disfigure other works of his own or of a preceding age. Besides this, Belon disposed the Birds known to him according to a definite system, which (rude as we now know it to be) formed a foundation on which several of his successors were content to build, and even to this day traces of its influence may still be discerned in the arrangement followed by writers who have faintly appreciated the principles on which modern taxonomers rest the outline of their schemes. Both his work and that of Gesner were illustrated with woodcuts, many of which display much spirit and regard to accuracy. Belon, as has just been said, had a knowledge of the anatomy of Birds, and he seems to have been the first to institute a direct comparison of their skeleton with that of Man ; but in this respect he only anticipated by a few Colter, years the more precise researches of VOLCHER GOITER, a Frisian, who in 1573 and 1575 published at Nuremberg two treatises, in one of which the internal structure of Birds in general is very creditably described, while in the other the osteology and myology of certain forms is given in considerable detail, and illustrated by carefully-drawn figures. The first is entitled Externarum et intemarum principalium humani corporis Tabulae, &c., while the second, which is the most valuable, is merely appended to the Lectiones Gabrielis Fallopii de partibus similaribus humani corporis, &c., and thus, the scope of each work being regarded as medical, the author s labours were wholly over looked by the mere natural-historians who followed, though Goiter introduced a table, " De di/erentiis Auium" furnish ing a key to a rough classification of such Birds as were known to him, and this as nearly the first attempt of the kind deserves notice here. Aldro- Contemporary with these three men was ULYSSES ALDRO- vandus. VANDUS, a Bolognese, who wrote an Historia Naturalium in sixteen folio volumes, most of which were not printed till after his death in 1605 ; but those on Birds appeared between 1599 and 1603. The work is almost wholly a compilation, and that not of the most discriminative kind, while a peculiar jealousy of Gesner is continuously displayed, though his statements are very constantly quoted nearly always as those of " Ornithologus," his name appearing but few times in the text, and not at all in the list of authors 1 Even at the present day it may be shrewdly suspected that not a few ornithologists would gladly follow Gesner s plan in their despair of seeing, in their own time, a classification which would really deserve the epithet scientific. 2 For instance, under the title of "Accipiter" we have to look, not only for the Sparrow-Hawk and Gos-Hawk, but for many other Birds of the Family (as we now call it) removed comparatively far from those species by modern ornithologists. cited. With certain modifications in principle not very important, but characterized by much more elaborate detail, Aldrovandus adopted Belon s method of arrangement, but in a few respects there is a manifest retrogression. The work of Aldrovandus was illustrated by copper-plates, but none of his figures approach those of his immediate predecessors in character or accuracy. Nevertheless the book was eagerly sought, and several editions of it appeared. 3 Mention must be made of a medical treatise by GASPAR Schwc SCHWENCKFELD, published at Liegnitz in 1603, under the frU- title of Theriotropheum Silesise, the fourth book of which consists of an " Aviarium Silesia;," and is the earliest of the works we now know by the name of Fauna. The author was well acquainted with the labours of his predeces sors, as his list of over one hundred of them testifies. Most of the Birds he describes are characterized with accuracy sufficient to enable them to be identified, and his obser vations upon them have still some interest ; but he was innocent of any methodical system, and was not exempt from most of the professional fallacies of his time. 4 Hitherto, from the nature of the case, the works aforesaid treated of scarcely any but the Birds belonging to the orbis veteribus notus ; but the geographical discoveries of the sixteenth century began to bear fruit, and many animals of kinds unsuspected were, about one hundred years later, made known. Here there is only space to name BONTIUS, CLUSIUS, HERNANDEZ (or FERNANDEZ), MARCGRAVE, NIEREMBERG, and Piso, 5 whose several works describing the natural products of both the Indies whether the result of their own observation or compilation together with those of OLINA and WORM, produced a marked effect, since they led up to what may be deemed the foundation of scientific Ornithology. 6 This foundation was laid by the joint labours of FRANCIS Wil- WILLUGHBY (born 1635, died 1672) and JOHN KAY (born 1 ".? 111 ; 1628, died 1705), for it is impossible to separate their share of work in Natural History more than to say that, while the former more especially devoted himself to zoology, botany was the favourite pursuit of the latter. Together they studied, together they travelled, and together they collected. Willughby, the younger of the two, and at first the other s pupil, seems to have gradually become the master ; but, he dying before the promise of his life was ful filled, his writings were given to the world by his friend Ray, who, adding to them from his own stores, published the Ornithologia in Latin in 1676, and in English with many emendations in 1678. In this work Birds generally were grouped in two great divisions " Land-Fowl " and " Water-Fowl," the former being subdivided into those which have a crooked beak and talons and those which have a straighter bill and claws, while the latter was separated into those which frequent waters and watery places and those that swim in the water each subdivision being further broken up into many sections, to the whole of which a key was given. Thus it became possible for almost any diligent reader without much chance of error to refer to its 3 The Historia Naturalis of JOHANNES JOHNSTONUS, said to be of Scottish descent but by birth a Pole, ran through several editions during the seventeenth century, but is little more than an epitome of the work of Aldrovandus. 4 The Hicrozoicon of Bochart a treatise on the animals named in Holy Writ was published in 1619. 5 For Lichtenstein s determination of the Birds described by Marcgrave and Piso see the Abkantllunyeu of the Berlin Academy for 1817 (pp. 155 sq.). 6 The earliest list of British Birds seems to be that in the Pinnje Rerum Naturalium of CHRISTOPHER MEKRETT, published in 1667. In the following year appeared the Onomasticon Xooicon of WALTER CHARLETON, which contains some information on ornithology. An enlarged edition of the latter, under the title of Excrcitalioncs &c., was published in 1677; but neither of these writers is of much authority. In 1684 SIBBALD in his Scotia illustratn published the earliest Fauna of Scotland.