Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/28

18 Rennie brought out a modified edition of it (reissued in 1833), and Newman another in 1866 (reissued in 1883); but those who wish to know the author s views had better consult the original. Next in order come the very inferior British Ornithology of Graves (3 vols. 8vo, 1811-21), and a work with the same title by Hunt (3 vols. 8vo, 1815-22), published at Norwich, but never finished. Then we have Selby s Illustrations of- British Ornithology, two folio volumes of coloured plates engraved by himself, between 1821 and 1833, with letterpress also in two volumes (Svo, 1825-33), a second edition of the fir.*,t volume being also issued (1833), for the author, having yielded to the pressure of the " Quinarian " doctrines then in vogue, thought it necessary to adjust his classification accordingly, and it must be admitted that for information the. second edition is best. In 1828 Fleming brought out his History of British Animals (Svo), in which the Birds are treated at con siderable length (pp. 41-146), though not with great success. In 1835 Mr Jenyns (now Blometield) produced an excellent Manual of British Vertebrate Animals, a volume (Svo) executed with great scientific skill, the Birds again receiving due attention (pp. 49-286), and the descriptions of the various species being as accurate as they are terse. In the same year began the Coloured Illustrations of British Birds and their Eggs of H. L. Meyer (4to), which was completed in 1843, whereof a second edition (7 vols. Svo, 1842-50) was brought out, and subsequently (1852-57) a reissue of the latter. In 1836 appeared Ey ton s History of the rarer British Birds, intended as a sequel to Bewick s well-known volumes, to which no important additions had been made since the issue of 1821. The year 1837 saw the beginning of two remarkable works by Macgiliivray and Yarrell respectively, and each entituled A History of British Birds. Of the first, undoubtedly the more original and in many respects the more minutely accurate, mention will again have to be made (page 24), and, save to state that its five volumes were not completed till 1852, nothing more needs now to be added. The second has unquestionably become the standard work on British Ornithology, a fact due in part to its numerous illustrations, many of them indeed ill drawn, though all carefully engraved, but much more to the breadth of the author s views and the judgment with which they were set forth. In practical acquaint ance with the internal structure of Birds, and in the perception of its importance in classification, he was certainly not behind his rival ; but he well knew that the British public in a Book of Birds not only did not want a series of anatomical treatises, but would even resent their intrO luction. He had the art to conceal his art, and his work was therefore a success, while the other was unhappily a failure. Yet with all his knowledge he was deficient in some of the qualities which a great naturalist ought to possess. His concep tion of what his work should be seems to have been perfect, his execution was not equal to the conception. However, he was not the first nor will he be the last to fall short in this respect. For him it. must be said that, whatever may have been done by the generation of British ornithologists now becoming advanced in life, he educated them to do it ; nay, his influence even extends to a younger generation still, though they may hardly be aware of it. Of Yarrell s work in three volumes, a second edition was published in 1845, a third in 1856, and a fourth, begun in 1871, and almost wholly rewritten, is still unfinished. Of the compilations based upon this work, without which they could not have been composed, there is no need to speak. One of the few appearing since, with the same scope, that arc not borrowed is Jardine s Birds of Great Britain and Ireland (4 vols. Svo, 1838-43), forming part of his Naturalist s Library ; and Gould s Birds of Great Britain has been already mentioned.* A considerable number .of local works deserving of notice have also to be named. The first three volumes of Thompson s Natural History of Ireland (Svo, 1849-51) contain an excellent account of the Birds of that island, and Mr Watters s Birds of Ireland (Svo, 1853) has also to be mentioned. For North Britain there is Mi- Robert Gray s Birds of the West of Scotland (Svo, 1871), which virtually is an account of those of almost the whole of that part of the kingdom. To these may be added Dunn s Ornithologist s Guide to Orkney and Shetland (8vo, 1837), the unfinished Historia Natural Orcat.lcnsisof Baikieand Heddle (Svo, 1S48), and Saxby s Birds of Shetland (Svo, 1874), while the sporting works of Charles St John contain much information on the Ornithology of the Highlands. 2 The loc"al works on English Birds arc still more numerous, but among them may be especially named Dillwyn s Fauna and Flora of Swansea (1848), Mr Knox s Ornithological Rambles in Sussex (1849), Mr Stevenson s Birds of Norfolk (1866-70), Mr Cecil Smith s Birds of Somerset (1869) and Birds of 1 Though contravening our plan, we must for its great merits notice here Mr More s series of papers in The Ibis for 1865, " On the Distri bution of Birds in Great Britain during the Nesting Season." 2 Did onr scheme permit us, we should be glad to mention in detail the various important communications on Scottish Birds of Alston, Messrs Bnrkley, Harvie-Brown, Lum.iden, and others. Guernsey (1879), Mr Cordeanx s Birds of the Humbcr District (1872), Mr John Hancock s Birds of Northumberland and Durham (1874), Tlic Birds of Nottinghamshire by Messrs Sterland and Whitaker (1879), Rodd s Bird s of Cornwall edited by Mr Harting (1S80), and the Vertebrate Fauna of Yorkshire (1881), of which the " Birds" arc by Mr W. E. Clarke. The good effects of " Faunal " works such as those named in the foregoing rapid survey none can doubt. " Every kingdom, every province, should have its own monographer," wrote Gilbert White more than one hundred years ago, and experience has proved the truth of his assertion. In a former article (Bmrs, iii. pp. 73G-7G4) the attempt has been made to shew how the labours of monographers of this kind, but on a more extended scale, can be brought together, and the valuable results that thence follow. Important as they are, they do not of themselves constitute Ornithology as a science ; and an enquiry, no less wide and far more recondite, still remains. By whatever term we choose to call it Classification, Arrangement, Systematizing, or Taxonomy that enquiry which has for its object the discovery of the natural groups into which Birds fall, and the mutual relations of those groups, has always been one of the deepest interest, and to it we must now recur. But nearly all the authors above named, it will have been seen, trod the same ancient paths, and in the works of scarcely one of them had any new spark of intelligence been struck out to enlighten the gloom which surrounded the investigator. It is now for us to trace the rise of the present more advanced school of ornithologists whose abours, preliminary as we must still regard them to be, yet give signs of far greater promise. It would probably be unsafe to place its origin further back than a few scattered hints contained in the " Pterographische Frag- mente " of CHRISTIAN LUDWIG NITZSCII, published in the Nitzsck ^fctf/azin fur den neuesten Zustand der Naturkunde (edited by Voigt) for May 1806 (xi. pp. 393-417), and even these might be left to pass unnoticed, were it not that we recog nize in them the germ of the great work which the same admirable zoologist subsequently accomplished. In these "Fragments," apparently his earliest productions, we find him engaged on the subject with which his name will always be especially identified, the structure and arrange ment of the feathers that form the proverbial characteristic of Birds. But, though the observations set forth in this essay were sufficiently novel, there is not much in them that at the time would have attracted attention, for perhaps no one not even the author himself could have then foreseen to what important end they would, in con junction with other investigations, lead future naturalists ; but they are marked by the same close and patient deter mination that eminently distinguishes all the work of their author ; and, since it will be necessary for us to return to this part of the subject later, there is here no need to say more of them. In the following year another set of hints of a kind so different that probably no one then living would have thought it possible that they should ever be brought in correlation with those of Nitzsch are contained in a memoir on Fishes contributed to the tenth volume of the Annales du Museum d /iistoire naturdle of Paris by ETIENNE GEOFFROY ST-HILAIRE in 1807. 3 Here we have ft G. St it stated as a general truth (p. 100) that young birds have Hilaire. the sternum formed of five separate pieces one in the middle, being its keel, and two " annexes " on each side to which the ribs are articulated all, however, finally uniting to form the single "breast-bone." Further on (pp. 101, 102) we find observations as to the number of ribs which are attached to each of the "annexes" there being some- 3 In the Philosophic Anatomir/ue (i. pp. 69-101, and especially pp. 135, 136), which appeared in 1818, Geoffroy St-Hilaire explained the views he had adopted at greater length.