Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/22

12 O It N I T H L G Y names arc assigned to tlie species figured ; but no text was Lear. ever supplied. In 1832 Mr LEAR, afterwards well known as a painter, brought out his Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidx, a volume which deserves especial notice from the extreme fidelity to nature and the great artistic skill with which the figures were executed. This same year (1832) saw the beginning of the marvellous series of illustrated ornithological works by Gould, which the name of JOHN GOULD is likely to be always remembered. A Century of Birds from the Himalaya Mountains was followed by The Birds of Europe in five volumes, published between 1832 and 1837, while in the interim (1834) appeared A Monograph oftheRamphastidiv, of which a second edition was some years later called for, then the Icones Avium, of which only two parts were published (1837-38), and A Monograph of the Trogonidx (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 Trochilidx or Humming-birds extending to five volumes, the last of which appeared in 1861, and has since been followed by a supplement now in course of completion by Mr SALVIN. A Monograph of the Odonto- phorinse. or Partridges of America (1850); The Birds of Asia, in seven volumes, the last completed by Mr SHAHPE (1850-83) ; The Birds of Great Britain, in five volumes (1862-73) ; 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 want ing. 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. Never theless 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 pub lishing it in some journal of comparatively easy access. An ambitious attempt to produce in England a general Frasrr. series of coloured plates on a large scale was Mr FRASKR S Zoologist Typica, the first part of which bears date 1841- 42. 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. Cousens and H. N. Turner, the latter (as his publications prove) a zoologist of much promise Mio in 1851 died, a victim to TVmmh au< * m < 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 Si-etches of Mr WOLF, "Woli. from animals in the gardens of the Zoological Society, was begun about 1855, with a brief text by MITCHELL, at that time the Society s secretary, in illustration of them. After his death in ] 859, the explanatory letterpress was rewritten by Mr 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 preten tious 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 Re.cue.il des Planches Coloriees d Oiseaux of TEMMINCK and LATTGIER, intended as a sequel to the Planches Enluminees of D Aubenton before noticed (page 6), 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 Methodique " 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 cor respond, but in some cases this is wanting, while on the other hand descriptions of species not figured are occasion ally introduced, and usually observations on the distribu tion and construction of each genus or group are added. The plates, which shew no improvement in execution on those of Martinet, are after drawings by Huet and Pretre, the former being perhaps the less bad draughtsman of the tw r o, 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 know ledge of the outside of Birds Temminck probably surpassed any of his contemporaries. The " Tableau Methodique offers a convenient concordance of the old J /tuic///^ Enluminees 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 Omithologie, of which something must presently be said. The Galtrie des Oiseaux, a rival work, with plates by OUDART, seems to have been begun immediately after the Oudart. former. The 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