Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/21

O K NITHOLOGY 11 ,e Vail- !mt. Vk-illut. countries with which they deal, while reference to the older of these treatises is usually given by the writers of the newer. Still it seems advisable here to furnish some con nected account of the progress made in the ornithological knowledge of those countries in which the readers of the pre sent volume may bo supposed to take the most lively interest for example, the British Islands and those parts of the European continent which lie nearest to them or are most commonly sought by travellers, the Dominion of Canada and the United States of America, South Africa, India, together with Australia and New Zealand. The more important Monographs, again, will usually be found cited in the series of special articles on Birds contained in this work, though, as will be immediately perceived, there are some so-styled Monographs, which by reason of the changed views of classification that at present obtain have lost their restricted character, and for all practical purposes have now to be regarded as general works. It will perhaps be most convenient to begin by mention ing some of these last, and in particular a number of them which appeared at Paris very early in this century. First in order of them is the Histoire Naturelle d une parlie dOiseaux nouveaux et rares de I Amerique et des Indes, a folio volume J published in 1 801 by LE VAILLANT. This is devoted to the very distinct and not nearly-allied groups of Hornbills and of birds which for want of a better name we must call "Chatterers," and is illustrated, like those works of which a notice immediately follows, by coloured plates, done in what was then considered to be the highest style of art and by the best draughtsmen procurable. The first volume of a Histoire Naturelle des Perroquets, a companion work by the same author, appeared in the same year, and is truly a Monograph, since the Parrots constitute a Family of birds so naturally severed from all others that there has rarely been anything else confounded with them. The second volume came out in 1805, and a third was issued in 1837-38 long after the death of its pre decessor s author, by BOTJRJOT ST-HILAIRE. Between 1803 and 1806 Le Vaillant also published in just the same style two volumes with the title of Histoire Naturelle. des Oiseaux de Paradis et des Rolliers, suivie de celle des Toucans et des Barbus, an assemblage of forms, which, miscellaneous as it is, was surpassed in incongruity by a fourth work on the same scale, the Histoire Naturelle des Promerops et des Guepiers, des Couroucous et des Touracos, for herein are found Jays, Waxwings, the Cock-of-the-Rock (Rupicola), and what not besides. The plates in this last are by Barraband, for many years regarded as the perfection of ornithological artists, and indeed the figures, when they happen to have been drawn from the life, are not bad ; but his skill was quite unable to vivify the preserved specimens contained in Museums, and when he had only these as subjects he simply copied the distortions of the " bird-stuff er." The following year, 1808, being aided by Temminck of Amsterdam, of whose son we shall presently hear more, Le Vaillant brought out the sixth volume of his Oiseaux d Afrique, already mentioned. Four more volufnes of this work were promised ; but the means of executing them were denied to him, and, though he lived until 1824, his publications ceased, A similar series of works was projected and begun about t the same time as that of Le A T aillant by AUDEBERT and VIEILLOT, though the former, who was by profession a painter and illustrated the work, was already dead more than a year before the appearance of the two volumes, bearing date 1802, and entitled Oiseaux d ores ou a rejlets metalliques, the effect of the plates in which he sought to heighten by the lavish use of gilding. The first volume 1 There is also an issue of this, as of the same author s other works, on large quarto paper. contains the " Colibris, Oiseaux-mouches, Jacamars et Promerops," the second the "-Grimpereaux" and " Oiseaux de Paradis" associations which set all the laws of system atic method at defiance. His colleague, Vieillot, brought out in 1805 a Histoire Naturelle des plus leaux Chanteurs de la Zone Torride with figures by Langlois of tropical Finches, Grosbeaks, Buntings, and other hard-billed birds ; and in 1807 two volumes of a Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux de I Amerique Septentrionale, without, however, paying much attention to the limits commonly assigned by geographers to that part of the world. In 1805 ANSELME DESMAREST published a Histoire naturelle des Tangaras, Desmarest des Manakins et des Todiers, which, though belonging to the same category as all the former, differs from them in its more scientific treatment of the subjects to which it refers; and, in 1808, TEMMINCK, whose father s aid to Le Temminck. Vaillant has already been noticed, brought out at Paris a Histoire Naturelle des Pigeons illustrated by Madame Knip, who had drawn the plates for Desmarest s volume. 2 Since we have begun by considering these large illustrated works in which the text is made subservient to the coloured plates, it may be convenient to continue our notice of such others of similar character as it may be expedient to mention here, though thereby we shall be led somewhat far afield. Most of them are but luxuries, and there is some degree of truth in the remark of Andreas Wagner in his lleport on the Progress of Zoology for 1843, drawn up for the Ptay Society (p. 60), that they " are not adapted for the extension and promotion of science, but must inevitably, on account of their unnecessary costliness, constantly tend to reduce the number of naturalists who are able to avail themselves of them, and they thus enrich ornithology only to its ultimate injury." Earliest in date as it is greatest in bulk stands AUDUBON S egregious Birds Audubon. of America in four volumes, containing four hundred and thirty-five plates, of which the first part appeared in London in 1827 and the last in 1838. It does not seem to have been the author s original intention to publish any letter press to this enormous work, but to let the plates tell their own story, though finally, with the assistance, as is now known, of WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY, a text, on the whole Macgil- more than respectable, was produced in five large octavos livray. under the title of Ornithological Biography, of which more will be said in the sequel. Audubon has been greatly ex tolled as an ornithological artist ; but he was far too much addicted to representing his subjects in violent action and in postures that outrage nature, while his drawing is very frequently defective. 3 In 1866 Mr D. G. ELLIOT began, and Elliot. in 1869 finished, a sequel to Audubon s great work in two volumes, on the same scale The New and Hitherto unjigured Species of the Birds of North America, containing life-size figures of all those which had been added to its fauna since the completion of the former. In 1830 JOHN EDWARD GRAY commenced the Illustra- Gray and tions of Indian Zoology, a series of plates of vertebrated Hardwkke. animals, but mostly of Birds, from drawings it is believed by native artists in the collection of General HARDWICKE, whose name is therefore associated with the work. Scientific 2 Temminck subsequently reproduced, with many additions, the text of this volume in his Histoire naturelle des Pigeons et des Gallinacees, published at Amsterdam in 1813-15, in 3 vols. 8vo. Between 18o8 and 1848 M. FLORENT-PROVOST brought out at Paris a further set of illustrations of Pigeons by Mdme. Knip. 3 On the completion of these two works, for they must lie regarded as distinct, an octavo edition in seven volumes under the title of The Birds of America was published in 1840-44. In this the large plates were reduced by means of the "camera lucida," the text was revised, and the whole systematically arranged. Other reprints have since been issued, but they are vastly inferior both in execution and value. A sequel to the octavo Birds of America, corresponding with it in form, was brought out in 1853-55 by CASSIS as Illustrations of the Birds of California, Texas, Oregon, British and Prussian America.