Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/17

ORNITHOLOGY a compiler, which had been manifest before, rather increased with age, and the consequences were not happy. 1 About the time that Buffon was bringing to an end his [amtuyt. studies of Birds, MAUDUYT undertook to write the Orni- thologie of the Encyclopedic Methodique a compara tively 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 ionna- was begun by BoNNATERRE, who, however, had only em - finished three hundred and twenty pages of it when he lost his life in the French Revolution ; and the work thus . 7 ieillot. arrested was continued by VIEILLOT under the slightly changed title of Tableau encyclopcdique et methodi^ue des trois regnes de la Nature the Ornithologie forming volumes four to seven, and not completed till 1823. In the former edition Mauduyt had taken the subjects alpha betically ; 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 Pennant, the Genera of Birds by THOMAS PENNANT, first printed at Edinburgh in 1773, but best known by the edition which appeared in London in 1781 ; the Elementa Ornithologica and Museum Ornithologicum of SCHAFFER, published at Ratisbon in 1774 and 1784 respectively; PETER BROWN S Neiv Illustrations of Zoology in London in 1776 ; HERMANN S Tabidx Ajfinitatum Animalium at Strasburg in 1783, followed posthumously in 1804 by his Observa- tiones Zoologies ; JACQUTN 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. 2 The practice of Brisson, Buffon, Latham, and others of neglecting to name after the Limuean fashion the species they described gave great encouragement to compilation, and led to what has proved to be of some inconvenience to P. L. S. modern ornithologists. In 1773 P. L. S. MULLER brought Miiller. 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 kxklaert. Linnttan model. In 1783 BODDAERT printed at Utrecht a Table des Planches Enlumineez^ in which he attempted to refer every species of Bird figured in that extensive series to its proper Linnsean genus, and to assign it a scientific name if it did not already possess one. In like manner in kopoli. 1786, SCOPOLI already the author of a little book published 1 He also prepared for publication a second edition of his Index Ornithologiciis, but this was never printed, and the manuscript is now in the present writer s possession. " The Naturalist s Miscellany or Vivarium Xaturale, in English and Latin, of SHAW and NODDER, the former being the author, the latter the draughtsman and engraver, was begun in 1789 mid carried on till Shaw s death, forming twenty-four volumes. Jt 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. 3 Of this work only iif ty 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. at Leipzig in 1769 under the title of Annus I. Historico- naturalis, in which are described many Birds, mostly from his own collection or the Imperial vivarium at Vienna was at the pains to print at Pavia in his miscellaneous Delicix Florae et Faunae, Insubricse, a Specimen Zoologicum* contain ing diagnoses, duly named, of the Birds discovered and described by SONNERAT in his Voyage aux Indes orientales Sonnerat. and Voyage a la Nouvelle G uinee, severally published at Paris in 1772 and 1776. But the most striking example of compilation was that exhibited by J. F. GMELIN, who Ginelin. in 1788 commenced what he called the Thirteenth Edition of the celebrated Systema Naturae, which obtained so wide a circulation that, in the comparative rarity of the original, the additions of this editor have been very frequently quoted, even by expert naturalists, as though they were the work of the author himself. Gmelin availed himself of every publication he could, but he perhaps found his richest booty in the labours of Latham, neatly condensing his English descriptions into Latin diagnoses, and bestow ing on them binomial names. Hence it is that Gmelin appears as the authority for so much of the nomenclature now in use. He tock many liberties with the details of Linnajus s work, buc left the classification, at least of the Birds, as it was a few new genera excepted. During all this time little had been done in studying the internal structure of Birds since the works of Goiter already mentioned 6 ; but the foundations of the science of Embry ology had been laid by the investigations into the develop ment of the chick by the great HARVEY. Between 1666 and 1669 PERRAULT edited at Paris eight accounts of the dissection by Du VERNEY of as many species of Birds, which, translated into English, were published by the Royal Society in 1702, under the title of The Natural History of Animals. After the death of the two anatomists just named, another series of similar descriptions of eight other species was found among their papers, and the whole were published in the Memoires of the French Academy of Sciences in 1733 and 1734. But in 1681 GERARD BLASIUS Gera . r * had brought out at Amsterdam an Anatome Animalium, containing the results of all the dissections of animals that he could find ; and the second part of this book, treating of Volatilia, makes a respectable show of more than one hundred and twenty closely-printed quarto pages, though nearly two-thirds is devoted to a treatise De Ovo et Pidlo, containing among other things a reprint of Harvey s researches, and the scientific rank of the whole book may be inferred from Bats being still classed with Birds. In 1720 VALENTINI published, at Frankfort-on-the-Main, his Valentini, Amjjhitheatrum Zootomicum, in which again most of the existing accounts of the anatomy of Birds were reprinted. But these and many other contributions, 7 made until nearly the close of the eighteenth century, though highly meritori ous, were unconnected as a whole, and it is plain that no conception of what it was in the power of Comparative Anatomy to set forth had occurred to the most diligent dissectors. This privilege was reserved for GEORGES CUVIER, who in 1798 published at Paris his Tableau Cuvier. Elementaire de Vhistoire naturelle des Animaux, and thus laid the foundation of a thoroughly and hitherto unknown 4 This was reprinted in 1882 by the Willughby Society. 5 DAUDIN S unfinished Traite elementaire et complet d 1 Ornithologie appeared at Paris in 1800, and therefore is the last of these general works published in the eighteenth century. 6 A succinct notice of the older works on Ornithotomy is given by Prof. SELENKA in the introduction to that portion of Dr Eronn s Klassen und Ordnungen des Thierreichs relating to Birds (pp. 1-9) published in 1869 ; and Prof. CARUS S Geschichte der Zoologie, pub lished in 1 872, may also be usefully consulted for further information on this and other heads. 7 The treatises of the two BARTHOLINIS and BoRRiCHirs published at Copenhagen deserve mention if only to record the activity of Danish anatomists in those days.