Ornithology

ORNITHOLOGY, 1 properly the methodical study and consequent knowledge of birds with all that relates to them; but the difficulty of assigning a limit to the commencement of such study and knowledge gives the word a very vague meaning, and practically procures its application to much that does not enter the domain of science. This elastic application renders it impossible in the following sketch of the history of ornithology to draw any sharp distinction between works that are emphatically ornithological and_those to which that title can only be attached by courtesy; for, since birds have always attracted far greater attention than any other group of animals with which in number or in importance they can be compared, there has grown up concerning them a literature of corresponding magnitude and of the widest range, extending from the recondite and laborious investigations of the morphologist and anatomist to the casual observations of the sportsman or the schoolboy.

Though birds make a not unimportant appearance in the earliest written records of the human race, the painter's brush has preserved their counterfeit presentment for a still longer period. A fragmentary fresco taken from a tomb at Medum was desposited some years ago, though in a decaying condition, in the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, Cairo. This Egyptian picture was said to date from the time of the third or fourth dynasty, some three thousand years before the Christian era. In it were depicted with a marvellous fidelity, and thorough appreciation of form and colouring (despite a certain conventional 1 Ornithologia, from the Greek opvia-, crude form of dpvcs, a bird, and -aoyia, allied to X6yos, commonly Englished a discourse. The earliest known use of the word Ornithology seems to be in the third edition of Blount's Glossographia (1670), where it is noted as being " the title of a late Book." treatment), the figures of six geese. Four of these figures can be unhesitatingly referred to two species (Anser albifrons and A. ruficollis) well known at the present day. In later ages the representations of birds of one sort or another in Egyptian paintings and sculptures become countless, and the bassi-rilievi of Assyrian monuments, though mostly belonging of course to a subsequent period, are not without them. No figures of birds, however, seem yet to have been found on the incised stones, bones or ivories of the prehistoric races of Europe.

History of Ornithology to End of 28th Century. Aristotle was the first serious author on ornithology with whose writings we are acquainted, but even he had, as he tells us, predecessors; and, looking to that portion of his works on animals which has come down to us, one Early s. finds that, though more than 170 sorts of birds are mentioned, 2 yet what is said of them amounts on the whole to very little, and this consists more of desultory observations in illustration of his general remarks (which are to a considerable extent physiological or bearing on the subject of reproduction) than of an attempt at a connected account of birds. One of his commentators, C. J. Sundevall - equally proficient in classical as in ornithological knowledge - was, in 1863, compelled to leave more than a score of the birds of which Aristotle wrote unidentified. Next in order of date, though at a long interval, comes Pliny the Elder, in whose Historia Naturalis Book X. is devoted to birds. Neither Aristotle nor Pliny attempted to classify the birds known to them beyond a very rough and for the most part obvious grouping. Aristotle seems to recognize eight principal groups: (1) Gampsonyches, approximately equivalent to the Accipitres of Linnaeus; (2) Scolecophaga, containing most of what would now be called Oscines, excepting indeed the (3) Acanthophaga, composed of the goldfinch, siskin and a few others; (4) Scnipophaga, the woodpeckers; (5) Peristeroide, or pigeons; (6) Schizopoda, (7) Steganopoda, and (8) Barea, nearly the same respectively as the Linnaean Grallae, Anseres and Gallinae. Pliny, relying wholly on characters taken from the feet, limits himself to three groups - without assigning names to them - those which have " hooked tallons, as Hawkes; or round long clawes, as Hennes; or else they be broad, flat, and whole-footed, as Geese and all the sort in manner of water;foule " - to use the words of Philemon Holland, who, in 1601, published a quaint and, though condensed, yet fairly faithful English translation of Pliny's work.

About a century later came Aelian, who died about A.D. 140, and compiled in Greek (though he was an Italian by birth) a number of miscellaneous observations on the peculiarities of animals. His work is a kind of commonplace book kept without scientific discrimination. A considerable number of birds are mentioned, and something said of almost each of them; but that something is too often nonsense according to modern ideas. The twenty-six books De Animalibus of Albertus Magnus (Groot), printed in 1478, are founded mainly on Aristotle. The twentythird of these books is De Avibus, and therein a great number of birds' names make their earliest appearance, few of which are without interest from a philologist's if not an ornithologist's point of view, but there is much difficulty in recognizing the species to which many of them belong. In 1485 was printed the first dated copy of the volume known as the Ortus sanitatis, to the popularity of which many editions testify. 3 Though said by its author, Johann Wonnecke von Caub (Latinized as Johannes de Cuba), to have been composed from a study of the 2 This is Sundevall's estimate; Drs Aubert and Wimmer in their excellent edition of the `Io-ropiac 1repi "c;iwv (Leipzig, 1868) limit the number to 126.

Absurd as much that we find both in Albertus Magnus and the Ortus seems to modern eyes, if we go a step lower in the scale and consult the " Bestiaries " or treatises on animals which were common from the 12th to the 14th century we shall meet with many more absurdities. See for instance that by Philippe de Thaun (Philippus Taonensis), dedicated to Adelaide or Alice, queen of Henry I. of England, and probably written soon after 1121, as printed by the late Mr Thomas Wright, in his Popular Treatises on Science written during the Middle Ages (London, 1841).

collections formed by a certain nobleman who had travelled in Eastern Europe, Western Asia and Egypt - possible Breidenbach, an account of whose travels in the Levant was printed at Mentz in 1486 - it is really a medical treatise, and its zoological portion is mainly an abbreviation of the writings of Albertus Magnus, with a few interpolations from Isidorus of Seville (who flourished in the beginning of the 7th century, and was the author of many works highly esteemed in the middle ages) and a work known as Physiologus. The third tractatus of this volume deals with birds - including among them bats, bees and other flying creatures; but as it is the first printed book in which figures of birds are introduced it merits notice, though most of the illustrations, which are rude woodcuts, fail, even in the coloured copies, to give any precise indication of the species intended to be represented.

The revival of learning was at hand, and William Turner, a Northumbrian, while residing abroad to avoid persecution at home, printed at Cologne in 1544 the first commentary on the birds mentioned by Aristotle and Pliny conceived in anything like the spirit that moves modern naturalists.' In the same year and from the same press was issued a Dialogus de Avibus by Gybertus Longolius, and in 1570 Caius brought out in London his treatise De rariorum animalium atque stirpium historic. In this last work, small though it be, ornithology has a good share; and all three may still be consulted with interest and advantage by its votaries. 2 Meanwhile the study received a great impulse from the appearance, at Zurich in 1555, of the third book of Conrad Gesner's Historia Animalium " qvi est de Auium natura," and at Paris in the same year of Pierre Belon's (Bellonius) Histoire de la nature des Oyseaux. Gesner brought an amount of erudition, hitherto unequalled, to bear upon his subject; and, making due allowance 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 Aelian, he adopted an alphabetical arrangement, though this was not too pedantically preserved, and did not hinder him from placing together the kinds of birds which he supposed (and generally 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 recognizing to some extent the principle of classification.3 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 1 This was reprinted at Cambridge in 1823 by Dr George Thackeray.

2 The Seventh of Wotton's De differentiis animalium Libri Decem, published at Paris in 1552, treats of birds; but his work is merely a compilation from Aristotle and Pliny, with references to other classical writers who have more or less incidentally mentioned birds and other animals. The author in his preface states - " Veterum scriptorum sententias in unum quasi cumulum coaceruaui, de meo nihil addidi." Nevertheless he makes some attempt at a systematic arrangement of birds, which, according to his lights, is far from despicable.

3 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.

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 years the more precise researches of Volcher Coiter, 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 internarum 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 overlooked by the mere naturalhistorians who followed, though Coiter introduced a table, " De differentiis Auium," furnishing 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.

Contemporary with these three men was Ulysses Aldrovandus, 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 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 copperplates, 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.4 Mention must be made of a medical treatise by Caspar Schwenckfeld, published at Liegnitz in 1603, under the title of Theriotropheum Silesiae, the fourth book of which consists of an " Aviarium Silesiae," 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 predecessors, 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 observations 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.' 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 16th century began to bear fruit, and many animals of kinds un suspected were, about one hundred years later, made known. Here there is only space to name Bontius, Clusius, Hernandez (or Fernandez), Marcgrave, Nieremberg and Piso, 6 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.' 4 The Historia Naturalis of Johannes Johnstonus, said to be of Scottish descent but by birth a Pole, ran through several editions during the 17th century, but is little more than an epitome of the work of Aldrovandus.

' The Hierozoicon of Bochart - a treatise on the animals named in Holy Writ - was published in 1619.

6 For Lichtenstein's determination of the birds described by Marcgrave and Piso see the Abhandlungen of the Berlin Academy for 1817 (pp. 1 55 seq.).

The earliest list of British birds seems to be that in the Pinax Rerum Naturalium of Christopher Merrett, published in 1667. In the following year appeared the Onomasticon Zooicon of Walter Charleton, which contains some information on ornithology. An enlarged edition of the latter, under the title of Exercitationes, &c., was published in 1677; but neither of these writers is of much authority. In 1684 Sibbald in his Scotia illustrate published the earliest Fauna of Scotland.

This foundation was laid by the joint labours of Francis Willughby (1635-1672) and John Ray (1628-1705), 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 fulfilled, 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 proper place nearly every bird he was likely to meet with. Ray's interest in ornithology continued, and in 1694 he completed a Synopsis Methodica Avium, which, through the fault of the booksellers to whom it was entrusted, was not published till 1713, when Derham gave it to the world.' Two years after Ray's death, Linnaeus, the great reformer of natural history, was born, and in 1735 appeared the first. edition of the celebrated Systema Naturae. Successive editions of this work were produced under its author's supervision in 1740, 1748, 1758 and 1766. Impressed by the belief that verbosity was the bane of science, he carried terseness to an extreme which frequently created obscurity, and this in no branch of zoology more than in that which relates to birds. Still the practice introduced by him of assigning to each species ,a diagnosis by which it ought in theory to be distinguishable from any other known species, and of naming it by two words - the first being the generic and the second the specific term, was so manifest an improvement upon anything which had previously obtained that the Linnaean method of differentiation and nomenclature established itself before long in spite of all opposition, and in principle became almost universally adopted. In his classification of birds Linnaeus for the most part followed Ray, and where he departed from his model he seldom improved upon it. In 1745 P. Barrere brought out at Perpignan a little book called Ornithologiae Specimen novum, and in 1752 Mdhring published at Aurich one still smaller, his Avium Genera. Both these works (now rare) are manifestly framed on the Linnaean method, so far as it had then reached; but in their arrangement of the various forms of birds they differed greatly from that which they designed to supplant, and they deservedly obtained little success. Yet as systematists their authors were no worse than Klein, whose Historiae Avium Prodromus, appearing at Lubeck in 1750, and Stemmata Avium at Leipzig in 1759, met with considerable favour in some quarters. The chief merit of the latter work lies in its forty plates, whereon the heads and feet of many birds are indifferently figured .2 But, while the successive editions of Linnaeus's great work were revolutionizing natural history, and his example of precision in language producing excellent effect on scientific writers, several other authors were advancing the study of ornithology in a very different way - a way that pleased the eye even more than his labours were pleasing the mind. Between 1731 and 1 To this was added a supplement by Petiver on the Birds of Madras, taken from pictures and information sent him by one Edward Buckley of Fort St George, being the first attempt to catalogue the birds of any part of the British possessions in India.

' After Klein's death his Prodromus, written in Latin, had the unwonted fortune of two distinct translations into German, published in the same year 1760, the one at Leipzig and Lubeck by Behn, the other at Danzig by Reyger - each of whom added more or less to the original.

1743 Mark Catesby brought out in London his Natural History of Carolina - two large folios containing highly coloured plates of the birds of that colony, Florida and the Bahamas.' Eleazar Albin between 1738 and 1740 produced a Natural History of Birds in three volumes of more modest dimensions; but he seems to have been ignorant of ornithology, and his coloured plates are greatly inferior to Catesby's. Far better both as draughtsman and as authority was George Edwards, who in 1 743 began, under the same title as Albin, a series of plates with letterpress, which was continued by the name of Gleanings in Natural History, and finished in 1760, when it had reached seven parts, forming four quarto volumes, the figures of which are nearly always quoted with approval.4 The year which saw the works of Edwards completed was still further distinguished by the appearance in France, where little had been done since Belon's days,' in six quarto volumes, of the Ornithologie of MathurinJacques Brisson - a work of very great merit so far as it goes, for as a descriptive ornithologist the author stands even now unsurpassed; but it must be said that his knowledge, according to internal evidence, was confined to books and to the external parts of birds' skins. It was enough for him to give a scrupulously exact description of such specimens as came under his eye, distinguishing these by prefixing two asterisks to their name, using a single asterisk where he had only seen a part of the bird, and leaving unmarked those that he described from other authors. His attempt at classification was certainly better than that of Linnaeus; and it is rather curious that the researches of the latest ornithologists point to results in some degree comparable with Brisson's systematic arrangement, for they refuse to keep the birds-of-prey at the head of the Class A y es, and they require the establishment of a much larger number of " Orders " than for a long while was thought advisable. Of such " Orders " Brisson had twenty-six and he gave pigeons and poultry precedence of the birds which are plunderers and scavengers. But greater value lies in his generic or sub-generic divisions, which, taken as a whole, are far more natural than those of Linnaeus, and consequently capable of better diagnosis. More than this, he seems to be the earliest ornithologist, perhaps the earliest zoologist, to conceive the idea of each genus possessing what is now called a " type " - though such_a term does not occur in his work; and, in like manner, without declaring it in so many words, he indicated unmistakably the existence of subgenera - all this being effected by the skilful use of names. Unfortunately he was too soon in the field to avail himself, even had he been so minded, of the convenient mode of nomenclature brought into use by Linnaeus. Immediately on the completion of his Regne Animale in 1756, Brisson set about his Ornithologie, and it is only in the last two volumes of the latter that any reference is made to the tenth edition of the Systema Naturae, in which the binomial method was introduced. It is certain that the first four volumes were written if not printed before that method was promulgated, and when the fame of Linnaeus as a zoologist rested on little more than the very meagre sixth edition of the Systema Naturae and the first edition of his Fauna Suecica. Brisson has been charged with jealousy of, if not hostility to, the great Swede, and it is true that in the preface to his Ornithologie he complains of the insufficiency of the Linnaean characters, but, when one considers how much better acquainted with birds the Frenchman was, such criticism must be allowed to be pardonable if not wholly just. Brisson's work was in French, with a parallel translation (edited, it is said, by Pallas) in Latin, which last was reprinted separately at Leiden three years afterwards.

' Several birds from Jamaica were figured in Sloane's Voyage, &c. (1705-1725), and a good many exotic species in the Thesaurus, &c., of Seba (1734-1765), but from their faulty execution these plates had little effect upon Ornithology.

4 The works of Catesby and Edwards were afterwards reproduced at Nuremberg and Amsterdam by Seligmann, with the letterpress in German, French and Dutch.

5 Birds were treated of in a worthless fashion by one D. B. in a Dictionnaire raisonne et universel des animaux, published at Paris in 1759.

In 1767 there was issued at Paris a book entitled L'Histoire naturelle eclaircie dans une de ses parties principales, l'ornithologie. This was the work of Salerne, published after his death, and is often spoken of as being a mere translation of Ray's Synopsis, but a vast amount of fresh matter, and mostly of good quality, is added.

The success of Edwards's very respectable work seems to have provoked competition, and in 1765, at the instigation of Buffon, the younger d'Aubenton began the publication known as the Planches enlumineez d'histoire naturelle, which appearing in forty-two parts was not completed till 1780, when the plates' it contained reached the number of 1008 - all coloured, as its title intimates, and nearly all representing birds. This enormous work was subsidized by the French government; and, though the figures are utterly devoid of artistic merit, they display the species they are intended to depict with sufficient approach to fidelity to ensure recognition in most cases without fear of error, which in the absence of any text is no small praise.2 But Buffon was not content with merely causing to be published this unparalleled set of plates. He seems to have regarded the work just named as a necessary precursor to his own labours in ornithology. His Histoire naturelle, generale et particuliere, was begun in 1749, and in 1770 he brought out, with the assistance of Guenau de Montbeillard, 3 the first volume of his great Histoire naturelle des oiseaux. Buffon was the first man who formed any theory that may be called reasonable of the geographical distribution of animals. He proclaimed the variability of species in opposition to the views of Linnaeus as to their fixity, and moreover supposed that this variability arose in part by degradation. 4 Taking his labours as a whole, there cannot be a doubt that he enormously enlarged the purview of naturalists, and, even if limited to birds, that, on the completion of his work upon them in 1783, ornithology stood in a very different position from that which it had before occupied.

Great as were the services of Buffon to ornithology in one direction, those of a wholly different kind rendered by John m. Latha must not be overlooked. In 1781 he began a work the practical utility of which was immediately recognized. This was his General Synopsis of Birds, and, though formed generally on the model of Linnaeus, greatly diverged in some respects therefrom. The classification was modified, chiefly on the old lines of Willughby and Ray, and certainly for the better; but no scientific nomenclature was adopted, which, as the author subsequently found, was a change for the worse. His scope was co-extensive with that of Brisson, but Latham did not possess the inborn faculty of picking out the character wherein one species differs from another. His opportunities of becoming acquainted with birds were hardly inferior to Brisson's, for during Latham's long lifetime there poured in upon him countless new discoveries from all parts of the world, but especially from the newly-explored shores of Australia and the islands of the Pacific Ocean. The British Museum had been formed, and he had access to everything it contained in addition to the abundant materials afforded him by the private museum of Sir Ashton Lever.' Latham entered, so far as the limits of his work would allow, into the 1 They were drawn and engraved by Martinet, who himself began in 1787 a Histoire des oiseaux with small coloured plates which have some merit, but the text is worthless.

Between 1767 and 1776 there appeared at Florence a Storia Naturale degli Uccelli, in five folio volumes, containing a number of ill-drawn and ill-coloured figures from the collection of Giovanni Gerini, an ardent collector who died in 1751, and therefore must be acquitted of any share in the work, which, though sometimes attributed to him, is that of certain learned men who did not happen to be ornithologists (cf. Savi, Ornitologia Toscana, i. Introduzione, p. v.).

He retired on the completion of the sixth volume, and thereupon Buffon associated Bexon with himself.

4 See $t George Mivart's address to the Section of Biology, Rep. Brit. Association (Sheffield Meeting, 1 879), p. 356.

In 1792 Shaw began the Museum Leverianum in illustration of this collection, which was finally dispersed by sale, and what is known to remain of it found its way to Vienna. Of the specimens in the British Museum described by Latham it is to be feared that scarcely any exist. They were probably very imperfectly prepared.

history of the birds he described, and this with evident zest whereby he differed from his French predecessor; but the number of cases in which he erred as to the determination of his species must be very great, and not unfrequently the same species is described more than once. His Synopsis was finished in 1785; two supplements were added in 1787 and 1802, 6 and in 1790 he produced an abstract of the work under the title of Index Ornithologicus, wherein he assigned names on the Linnaean method to all the species described. Not to recur again to his labours, it may be said here that between 1821 and 1828 he published at Winchester, in eleven volumes, an enlarged edition of his original work, entitling it A General History of Birds; but his defects as a compiler, which had been manifest before, rather increased with age, and the consequences were not happy.' About the time that Buffon was bringing to an end his studies of birds, Mauduyt undertook to write the Ornithologie of the Encyclopedic methodique - a comparatively easy task, considering the recent works of his fellow-countrymen on that subject, and finished in 1784. Here it requires no further com-. ment, especially as a new edition was called for in 1790, the ornithological portion of which was begun by Bonnaterre, who, however, had only finished three hundred and twenty pages of it when he lost his life in the French Revolution; and the work thus arrested was continued by Vieillot under the slightly changed title of Tableau encyclopedique et methodique 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 alphabetically; 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 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 2774 and 1784 respectively; Peter Brown's New Illustrations of Zoology in London in 1776; Hermann's Tabular Affinitatum Animalium at Strasburg in 1783, followed posthumously in 1804 by his Observationes Zoologicae; Jacquin'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 1 775 produced a History of British Birds) in 1822 began another series of Figures of rare and curious Birds.8 The practice of Brisson, Buffon, Latham and others of neglecting to name after the Linnaean fashion the species they described gave great encouragement to compilation, and led to what has proved to be of some inconvenience to modern ornithologists. In 1773 P. L. S. Muller brought 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 Linnaean model. In 1783 Boddaert printed at Utrecht a Table des planches enlumineez, 9 in which he attempted to refer every species of bird figured in that extensive series to its proper Linnaean genus, and to assign it a scientific name if it did not already possess one. In like manner in 1786, Scopoli - already the author of a little book published at Leipzig in 1769 under the title of Annus I. Historiconaturalis, in which are described many birds, mostly from his A German translation by Bechstein subsequently appeared.

7 He also prepared for publication a second edition of his Index Ornithologicus, but this was never printed, and the manuscript came into A. Newton's possession.

The Naturalist's Miscellany or Vivarium Naturale, in English and Latin, of Shaw and Nodder, the former being the author, the latter the draughtsman and engraver, was begun in 1789 and carried on till Shaw's death, forming twenty-four volumes. It 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.

9 Of this work only fifty 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.

own collection or the Imperial vivarium at Vienna - was at the pains to print at Pavia in his miscellaneous Deliciae Florae et Faunae Insubricae a Specimen Zoologicum 1 containing diagnoses, duly named, of the birds discovered and described by Sonnerat in his. Voyage aux Indes orientales and Voyage a la Nouvelle Guine'e, severally published at Paris in 1772 and 1776. But the most striking example of compilation was that exhibited by J. F. Gmelin, who in 1788 commenced what he called the Thir. teenth 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 bestowing on them binomial names. Hence it is that Gmelin appears as the authority for so much of the nomenclature now in use. He took many liberties with the details of Linnaeus's work, but 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; 3 but the foundations of the science of embryology had been laid by the investigations into the development 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 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 Pullo, 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 Amphitheatrum Zootomicum, in which again most of the existing accounts of the anatomy of birds were reprinted. But these and many other contributions, 4 made until nearly the close of the 18th century, though highly meritorious, 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.

It was reserved for Georges Cuvier, who in 1798 published at Paris his Tableau elementaire de l'histoire naturelle des ani-. maux, to lay the foundation of a thoroughly and Cuvler hitherto unknown mode of appreciating the value of the various groups of the animal kingdom. Yet his first attempt was a mere sketch. 5 Though he made a perceptible advance on the classification of Linnaeus, at that time predominant, it is now easy to see in how many ways - want of sufficient material being no doubt one of the chief - Cuvier failed to produce a really natural arrangement. His principles, however, are those which must still guide taxonomers, notwithstanding that they have in so great a degree overthrown the entire scheme which he propounded. Confining our attention here to ornithology, Cuvier's arrangement of the class Aver is now seen to be not very much better than any which it superseded. But this view is gained by following the methods which Cuvier taught. In the work just mentioned few details are given; but even the more elaborate classification of birds contained in his Lecons d'anatomie comparee of 1805 is based wholly on external characters, such as had been used by nearly all his predecessors; and the Regne Animal of 1817, when he 1 This was reprinted in 5882 by the Willughby Society.

2 Daudin's unfinished Traite elementaire et complet d'ornithologie appeared at Paris in 1800, and therefore is the last of these general works published in the 18th century.

3 A succinct notice of the older works on ornithotomy is given by Professor Selenka in the introduction to that portion of Dr Bronn's Klassen and Ordnungen des Thierreichs relating to birds (pp. 5-9) published in 1869; and Professor Carus's Geschichte der Zoologie, published in 1872, may also be usefully consulted for further information on this and other heads.

4 The treatises of the two Bartholinis and Borrichius published at Copenhagen deserve mention if only to record the activity of Danish anatomists in those days.

5 It had no effect on Lacepbde, who in the following year added a Tableau methodique containing a classification of birds to his Discours d'ouverture (Mdm. de l'Institut, iii. pp. 454-4 68, 503-519) was in his fullest vigour, afforded not the least evidence that he had ever dissected a couple even of birds 6 with the object of determining their relative position in his system, which then, as before, depended wholly on the configuration of bills, wings and feet. But, though apparently without such a knowledge of the anatomy of birds as would enable him to apply it to the formation of that natural system which he was fully aware had yet to be sought, he seems to have been an excellent judge of the characters afforded by the bill and limbs, and the use he made of them, coupled with the extraordinary reputation he acquired on other grounds, procured for his system the adhesion for many years of the majority of ornithologists.' Hitherto mention has chiefly been made of works on general ornithology, but it will be understood that these were largely aided by the enterprise of travellers, and as there were many of them who published their narratives in separate forms their contributions have to be considered. Of those travellers then the first to be here especially named is Marsigli, the fifth volume of whose Danubius Pannonico-Mysicus is devoted to the birds he met with in the valley of the Danube, and appeared at the Hague in 1725, followed by a French translation in 1744.8 Most of the many pupils whom Linnaeus sent to foreign countries submitted their discoveries to him, but Kalm, Hasselqvist and Osbeck published separately their respective travels in North America, the Levant and China. 9 The incessant journeys of Pallas and his colleagues - Falk, Georgi, S. G..Gmelin, Giildenstalt, Lepechin and others - in the exploration of the recently extended Russian empire supplied not only much material to the Commentarii and Acta of the Academy of St Petersburg, but more that is to be found in their narratives - all of it being of the highest interest to students of Palaearctic or Nearctic ornithology. Nearly the whole of their results, it may here be said, were summed up in the important Zoographia Rosso-Asiatica of the first-named naturalist, which saw the light in 1811 - the year of its author's death - but, owing to circumstances over which he had no control, was not generally accessible till twenty years later. Of still wider interest are the accounts of Cook's three famous voyages, though unhappily much of the information gained by the naturalists who accompanied him on one or more of them seems to be irretrievably lost: the original observations of the elder Forster were not printed till 1844, and the valuable collection of zoological drawings made by the younger Forster still remains unpublished in the British Museum. The several accounts by John White, Collins, Phillips, Hunter and others of the colonization of New South Wales at the end of the last century ought not to be overlooked by any Australian ornithologist. The only information at this period on the ornithology of South America is contained in the two works on Chile by Molina, published at Bologna in 1776 and 1782. The travels of Le Vaillant in South Africa having been completed in 5785, his great Oiseaux d'Afrique began to appear in Paris in 1797; but it is hard to speak properly of this work, for several of the species described in it are certainly not, and never were in his time, inhabitants of that country, though he sometimes gives a long account of the circumstances under which he observed them.1° From travellers who employ themselves in collecting the animals of any distant country the zoologists who stay at home and study those of their own district, be it great or small, are really not so much divided as at first might appear. Both may well be named "'Faunists," and of the latter there were not a few who having turned their attention more or less to ornithology should here be 6 So little regard did he pay to the osteology of birds that, according to de Blainville (Jour. de Physique, xcii. p. 187, note), the skeleton of a fowl to which was attached the head of a hornbill was for a long time exhibited in the Museum of Comparative Anatomy at Paris ! Yet, in order to determine the difference of structure in their organs of voice, Cuvier, as he says in his Legons (iv. 464), dissected more than one hundred and fifty species of birds. Unfortunately for him, as will appear in the sequel, it seems not to have occurred to him to use any of the results he obtained as the basis of a classification.

7 It is unnecessary to enumerate the various editions of the Regne Animal. Of the English translations, that edited by Griffiths and Pidgeon is the most complete. The ornithological portion of it contained in these volumes received many additions from John Edward Gray, and appeared in 1829.

8 Though much later in date, the Iter per Poseganam Sclavoniae of Piller and Mitterpacher, published at Buda in 1783, may perhaps be here most conveniently mentioned.

9 The results of Forsk5.l's travels in the Levant, published after his death by Niebuhr, require mention, but the ornithology they contain is but scant.

10 It has been charitably suggested that, his collection and notes having suffered shipwreck, he was induced to supply the latter from his memory and the former by the nearest approach to his lost specimens that he could obtain. This explanation, poor as it is, fails, however, in regard to some species.

mentioned, and first among them Rzaczynski, who in 1721 brought out at Sandomirsk the Historia naturalis curiosa regni Poloniae, to which an Auctuarium was posthumously published at Danzig in 1742. This also may be perhaps the most proper place to notice the Historia avium Hungariae of Grossinger, published at Posen in 1793. In 1734 J. L. Frisch began the long series of works on the birds of Germany with which the literature of ornithology is enriched, by his Vorstellung der Vogel Teutschlands, which was only completed in 1763, and, its coloured plates proving very attractive, was again issued at Berlin in 1817. The little fly-sheet of Zorn l - for it is scarcely more - on the birds of the Hercynian Forest made its appearance at Pappenheim in 1745. In 1756 Kramer published at Vienna a modest Elenchus of the plants and animals of Lower Austria, and J. D. Petersen produced at Altona in 1766 a Verzeichniss balthischer Vogel; while in 1791 J. B. Fischer's Versuch einer Naturgeschichte von Livland appeared at Konigsberg, next year Beseke brought out at Mitau his Beytrag zur Naturgeschichte der Vogel Kurlands, and in 1794 Siemssen's Handbuch of the birds of Mecklenburg was published at Rostock. But these works, locally useful as they may have been, did not occupy the whole attention of German ornithologists, for in 1791 Bechstein reached the second volume of his Gemeinnititzige Naturgeschichte Deutschlands, treating of the birds of that country, which ended with the fourth in 1795. Of this an abridged edition by the name of Ornithologisches Taschenbuch appeared in 1802 and 1803, with a supplement in 1 812; while between 1805 and 1809 a fuller edition of the original was issued. Moreover in 1 795 J. A. Naumann humbly began at COthen a treatise on the birds of the principality of Anhalt, which on its completion in 1804 was found to have swollen into an ornithology of northern Germany and the neighbouring countries. Eight supplements were successively published between 1805 and 1817, and in 1822 a new edition was required. This Naturgeschichte der Vogel Deutschlands, being almost wholly rewritten by his son J. F. Naumann, is by far the best thing of the kind as yet produced in any country. The fulness and accuracy of the text, combined with the neat beauty of its coloured plates, have gone far to promote the study of ornithology in Germany, and while essentially a popular work, since it is suited to the comprehension of all readers, it is throughout written with a simple dignity that commends it to the serious and scientific. Its twelfth and last volume was published in 1844 - by no means too long a period for so arduous and honest a performance, and a supplement was begun in 1847; but, the editor - or author as he may be fairly called - dying in 1857, this continuation was finished in 1860 by the joint efforts of J. H. Blasius and Dr Baldamus. In 1800 Borkhausen with others commenced at Darmstadt a Teutsche Ornithologie in folio which appeared at intervals till 1812, and remains unfinished, though a reissue of the portion published took place between 1837 and 1841.

Other European countries, though not quite so prolific as Germany, bore some ornithological fruit at this period; but. in all southern Europe only four faunistic products can be named: the Saggio di storia naturale Bresciana of Pilati, published at Brescia in 1769; the Ornitologia dell' Europa meridionale of Bernini, published at Parma between 1772 and 1776; the Uccelli di Sardegna of Cetti, published at Sassari in 1776; and the Romana ornithologia of Gilius, published at Rome in 1781 - the last being in great part devoted to pigeons and poultry. More appeared in the North, for in 1770 Amsterdam sent forth the beginning of Nozeman's Nederlandsche Vogelen, a fairly illustrated work in folio, but only completed by Houttuyn in 1829, and in Scandinavia most of all was done. In 1746 the great Linnaeus had produced a Fauna Svecica, of which a second edition appeared in 1761, and a third, revised by Retzius, in 1800. In 1764 Briinnich published at Copenhagen his Ornithologia borealis, a compendious sketch of the birds of all the countries then subject to the Danish crown. At the same place appeared in 1767 Leem's work, De Lapponibus Finmarchiae, to which Gunnerus contributed some good notes on the ornithology of northern Norway, and at Copenhagen and Leipzig was published in 1780 the Fauna Groenlandica of Otho Fabricius.

Of strictly American origin can here be cited only W. Bartram's Travels through North and South Carolina and B. S. Barton's Fragments of the Natural History of Pennsylvania,' both printed at Philadelphia, one in 1791, the other in 1799; but J. R. Forster published a Catalogue of the Animals of North America in London in 1771, and the following year described in the Philosophical Transactions a few birds from Hudson Bay. 3 A greater undertaking was Pennant's Arctic Zoology, published in 1785, with a supplement in 1787. The scope of this work was originally intended to be limited to North America, but circumstances induced him to include all the species of Northern Europe and Northern Asia, and though not free from errors it is a praiseworthy performance. A second edition appeared in 1792.

The ornithology of Britain naturally demands greater attention.

1 His earlier work under the title of Petinotheologie can hardly be deemed scientific.

This extremely rare book has been reprinted by the Willughby Society.

Both of these treatises have also been reprinted by the Willughby Society.

The earliest list of British birds we possess is that given by Merrett in his Pinax rerun naturalium Britannicarum, printed in London in 1667.4 In 1677 Plot published his Natural History of Oxfordshire, which reached a second edition in 1705, and in 1686 that of Staffordshire. A similar work on Lancashire, Cheshire and the Peak was sent out in 1700 by Leigh, and one on Cornwall by Borlase in 1758 - all these four being printed at Oxford. In 1766 appeared Pennant's British Zoology, a well-illustrated folio, of which a second edition in octavo was published in 1768, and considerable additions (forming the nominally third edition) in 1770, while in 1777 there were two issues, one in octavo, the other in quarto, each called the fourth edition. In 1812, long after the author's death, another edition was printed, of which his son-in-law Hanmer was the reputed editor, but he received much assistance from Latham, and through carelessness many of the additions herein made have often been ascribed to Pennant. In 1769 Berkenhout gave to the world his Outlines of the Natural History of Great Britain and Ireland, which reappeared under the title of Synopsis of the same in 1795. Tunstall's Ornithologia Britannica, which appeared in 1771, is little more than a list of names.' Hayes's Natural History of British Birds, a folio with forty plates, appeared between 1771 and 1775, but was of no scientific value. In 1781 Nash's Worcestershire included a few ornithological notices; and Walcott in 1789 published an illustrated Synopsis of British Birds, coloured copies of which are rare. Simultaneously William Lewin began his seven quarto volumes on the Birds of Great Britain, a reissue in eight volumes following between 1795 and 1801. In 1791 J. Heysham added to Hutchins's Cumberland a list of birds of that county, whilst in the same year began Thomas Lord's valueless Entire New System of Ornithology, the text of which was written or corrected by Dr Dupree, and in 1794 Donovan began a History of British Birds which was only finished in 1819 - the earlier portion being reissued about the same time. Bolton's Harmonia ruralis, an account of British song-birds, first appeared between 1794 and 1796, but subsequent editions appeared up to 1846.

All the foregoing publications yield in importance to two, that remain to be mentioned, a notice of which will fitly conclude this part of our subject. In 1767 Pennant, several of whose works have already been named, entered into correspondence with Gilbert White, receiving from him much information, almost wholly drawn from his own observation, for the succeeding editions of the British Zoology. In 1769 White began exchanging letters of a similar character with Barrington. The epistolary intercourse with the former continued until 1780 and with the latter until 1787. In 1789 White's share of the correspondence, together with some miscellaneous matter, was published as The Natural History of Selborne - from the name of the village in which he lived. Observations on birds form the principal though by no means the whole theme of this book, which may be safely said to have done more to promote a love of ornithology in England than any other work that has been written, nay more than all the other works (except one next to be mentioned) put together. It has passed through a far greater number of editions than any other work on natural history in the whole world, and has become emphatically an English classic - the graceful simplicity of its style, the elevating tone of its spirit, and the sympathetic chords it strikes recommending it to every lover of Nature, while the severely scientific reader can scarcely find an error in any statement it contains, whether of matter of fact or opinion. It is almost certain that more than half the zoologists of the British Islands for many years past have been infected with their love of the study of Gilbert White; and it can hardly be supposed that his influence will cease.

The other work to the importance of which on ornithology in England allusion has been made is Bewick's History of British Birds. The first volume of this, containing the land-birds, appeared in 1797 6 - the text being, it is understood, by Beilby - the second, containing the water-birds, in 1804. The woodcuts illustrating this work are generally of surpassing excellence, and it takes rank in the category of artistic publications. Fully admitting the extraordinary execution of the engravings, every ornithologist may perceive that as portraits of the birds they are of very unequal merit. Some of the figures were drawn from stuffed specimens, and accordingly perpetuate all the imperfections of the original; others represent species with the appearance of which the artist was not 4 In this year there were two issues of this book; one, nominally a second edition, only differs from the first in having a new titlepage. No real second edition ever appeared, but in anticipation of it Sir Thomas Browne prepared in or about 1671 (?) his " Account of Birds found in Norfolk," of which the draft, now in the British Museum, was printed in his collected works by Wilkin in 1835. If a fair copy was ever made its resting-place is unknown.

' It has been republished by the Willughby Society.

There were two issues - virtually two editions - of this with the same date on the title-page, though one of them is said not to have been published till the following year. Among several other indicia this may be recognized by the woodcut of the " sea eagle " at page II, bearing at its base the inscription " Wycliffe, 1791," and by the additional misprint on page 145 of Sahaeniclus for Sahaeniclus. familiar, and these are either wanting in expression or are caricatures;1 but those that were drawn from live birds, or represent species which he knew in life, are worthy of all praise. It is well known that the earlier editions of this work, especially if they be upon large paper, command extravagant prices; but in reality the copies on smaller paper are now the rarer, for the stock of them has been consumed in nurseries and schoolrooms, where they have been torn up or worn out with incessant use. Moreover, whatever the lovers of the fine arts may say, it is nearly certain that the " Bewick Collector " is mistaken in attaching so high a value to these old editions, for owing to the want of skill in printing - indifferent ink being especially assigned as one cause - many of the earlier issues fail to show the most delicate touches of the engraver, which the increased care bestowed upon the edition of 1847 (published under the supervision of John Hancock) has revealed - though it must be admitted that certain blocks have suffered from wear of the press so as to be incapable of any more producing the effect intended. Of the text it may be said that it is respectable, but no more.

The existence of these two works explains the widely-spread taste for ornithology in England, which is to foreigners so puzzling, and the zeal - not always according to knowledge, but occasionally reaching to serious study - with which that taste is pursued.

Ornithology in the 19th Century. On reviewing the progress of ornithology since the end of the 18th century, the first thing that will strike us is the fact that general works, though still undertaken, have become proportionally fewer, while special works, whether relating to the ornithic portion of the fauna of any particular country, or limited to certain groups of birds - works to which the name of " Monograph " has become wholly restricted - have become far more numerous. Another change has come over the condition of ornithology, as of kindred sciences, induced by the multiplication of learned societies which issue publications as well as of periodicals of greater or less scientific pretension. A number of these must necessarily be left unnoticed here. Still it seems advisable to furnish some connected account of the progress made in the ornithological knowledge of 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 will usually be found cited in the separate articles on birds contained in this work, though some, by reason of changed views of classification, have for practical purposes to be regarded now as general works.

It will perhaps be most convenient to begin by mentioning some of these last, and in particular a number of them which appeared at Vail- Paris very early in the 19th century. First in order of them Le. i s the Histoire naturelle d'une pantie d'oiseaux nouveaux et cares de l'Amerique et des Indes, a folio volume 2 published in 1801 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 in1837-1838long after the death of its predecessor's author, by Bourjot 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-stuffier." 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 1 This is especially observable in the figures of the birds of prey.

2 There is also an issue of this, as of the same author's other works, on large quarto paper.

his Oiseaux d'Afrique, already mentioned. Four more volumes 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 the same time as that of Le Vaillant 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 2802, and entitled Oiseaux dores ou a reflets metalliques, the effect of the plates in which he sought to heighten by the lavish use of gilding. The first volume contains the " Colibris, Oiseaux-mouches, Jacamars et Promerops," the second the " Grimpereaux " and " Oiseaux de Paradis " - associations which set all the laws of systematic method at defiance. His colleague, Vieillot, brought out in 1805 a Histoire naturelle des plus beaux 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 l'Amenique 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, des manakins esmarest. 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, K. J. Temminck, whose father's aid to Le 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.3 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 Report on the Progress of Zoology for 1843, drawn up for the Ray 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 Birds 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 letterpress 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 more than respectable, was produced in five large Ma egil- octavos under the title of Ornithological Biography, of liyr ay. which more will be said in the sequel. Audubon has been greatly extolled 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.4 In 1866 D. G. Elliot began, and in 1869 finished, a sequel Elliot. to Audubon's great work in two volumes, on the same scale - The New and Hitherto unfigured 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 Illustrations of Indian Zoology, a series of plates of vertebrated animals, G w but mostly of birds, from drawings, it is believed by dlcke.. native artists in the collection of General Hardwicke, whose name is therefore associated with the work. Scientific names are assigned to the species figured; but no text Lear. was ever supplied. In 1832 Edward Lear, afterwards well known as a humorist, brought out his Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidae, 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 which the name of John Gould is likely to be always remembered. A Century of Birds from the Himalaya Mountains was followed by The Temminck subsequently reproduced, with many additions, the text of this volume in his Histoire naturelle des pigeons et des gallinacees, published at Amsterdam in 1813-1815, in 3 vols. 8vo. Between 1838 and 1848 M. Florent-Provost brought out at Paris a further set of illustrations of pigeons by Mme Knip.

4 On the completion of these two works, for they must be regarded as distinct, an octavo edition in seven volumes under the title of The Birds of America was published in 1840-1844. 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 in1853-1855by Cassin as Illustrations of the Birds of California, Texas, Oregon, British and Russian America. Birds of Europe in five volumes, published between 1832 and 1837, while in the interim (1834) appeared A Monograph of the Ramphastidae, of which a second edition was some years later called for, then the Icones avium, of which only two parts were published (1837-1838), and A Monograph of the Trogonidae (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 Trochilidae or Humming-birds extending to five volumes, the last of which appeared in 1861, and was followed by a supplement by Mr Salvin. A Monograph of the Odontophorinae or Partridges of America (1850); The Birds of Asia, in seven volumes, the last completed by Mr Sharpe (1850-1883); The Birds of Great Britain, in five volumes (1863-1873); 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 wanting. 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. Nevertheless 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 publishing it in some journal of comparatively easy access.

An ambitious attempt to produce in England a general series of coloured plates on a large scale was Louis Fraser's Zoologia Typica, . the first part of which bears date 1841-1842. Others Fraser 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, who in 1851 died, a victim to 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 Sketches of Joseph Wolf, from animals in the gardens of the Zoological Society of London, was Wolf. begun about 1855, with a brief text by D. W. Mitchell, at W that time the Society's secretary, in illustration of them.

After his death in 1859, the explanatory letterpress was rewritten by P. L. 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 pretentious 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 recueil des planches coloriees d'oiseaux of Temminck Temminck and Langier, intended as a sequel to the Planches en- luminees of D'Aubenton before noticed, and like that and Langier. work issued both in folio and quarto size. The first Lang 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 correspond, but in some cases this is wanting, while on the other hand descriptions of species not figured are occasionally introduced, and usually observations on the distribution and construction of each genus or group are added. The plates, which show 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 two, 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 knowledge of the outside of birds Temminck probably surpassed any of his contemporaries. The " Tableau methodique " offers a convenient concordance of the old Planches 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'ornithologie, of which something must presently be said.

The Galerie des oiseaux, a rival work, with plates by Oudart,' seems to have been begun immediately after the former. The original project was apparently to give a figure and ()Udall. description of every species of bird; but that was soon found to be impossible; and, when six parts had been issued, with text by some unnamed author, the scheme was brought within practicable limits, and the writing of the letterpress was Vieillot. entrusted to Vieillot, who, proceeding on a systematic plan, performed his task very creditably, completing the work, which forms two quarto volumes, in 1825, the original text and fifty-seven plates being relegated to the end of the second volume as a supplement. His portion is illustrated by two hundred and ninety-nine coloured plates that, wretched as they are, have been continually reproduced in various text-books - a fact possibly due to their subjects having been judiciously selected. It is a tradition that, this work not being favourably regarded by the authorities of the Paris Museum, its draughtsman and author were refused closer access to the specimens required, and had to draw and describe them through the glass as they stood on the shelves of the cases.

In 1825 Jardine and Selby began a series of Illustrations of Ornithology, the several parts of which appeared at long and irregular intervals, so that it was not until 1839 that three volumes Jardine containing one hundred and fifty plates were completed. and Selby. Then they set about a Second Series, which, forming a single volume with fifty-three plates, was finished in 1843. These authors, being zealous amateur artists, were their own draughtsmen to the extent even of lithographing the figures. In 1828 James Wilson (author of the article Ornithology in the 7th and Wilson 8th editions of the present work) began, under the title of Illustrations of Zoology, the publication of a series of his own drawings (which he did not, however, himself engrave) with corresponding letterpress. Of the thirty-six plates illustrating this volume, a small folio, twenty are devoted to Ornithology, and contain figures, which, it must be allowed, are not very successful, of several species rare at the time.

Though the three works last mentioned fairly come under the same category as the Planches enluminees and the Planches coloriees, no one of them can be properly deemed their rightful Des Murs. heirs. The claim to that succession was made in 1845 by Des Murs for his Iconographie ornithologique, which, containing seventy-two plates by Prevot and Oudart l (the latter of whom had marvellously improved in his drawings since he worked with Vieillot), was completed in 1849. Simultaneously with this Du Bus began a work on a plan precisely similar, the Esquisses ornithoDu Bus. logiques, illustrated by Severeyns, which, however, stopped short in 1849 with its thirty-seventh plate, while the letterpress unfortunately does not go beyond that belonging to the twentieth. In 1866 the succession was again taken up by the Exotic Ornithology of Messrs Sclater and Salvin, containing one Sclater hundred plates, representing one hundred and four and species, all from Central or South America, which are Salvia. neatly executed by J. Smit. The accompanying letter press is in some places copious, and useful lists of the species of various genera are occasionally subjoined, adding to the definite value of the work, which, forming one volume, was completed in 1869.

Rowley's Ornithological Miscellany in three quarto volumes, profusely illustrated, appeared between 1875 and 1878. The contents are as varied as the authorship, and, most of the Rowley. leading English ornithologists having contributed to the work, some of the papers are extremely good, while in the plates, which are in Keulemans's best manner, many rare species of birds are figured, some of them for the first time.

More recent monographs have been more exact, and some of them equally sumptuous. Amongst these may be mentioned F. E. Blaauw's Monograph of the Cranes (1897, folio); St G. Mivart's Monograph of the Lories (1898, folio); the Hon. W. Rothschild's Monograph of the Genus Casuarius (1899, quarto); R. B. Sharpe's 1 On the title-page credit is given to the latter alone, but only two-thirds of the plates (from pl. 25 to the end) bear his name.

Monograph of the Paradiseidae (1898, folio); H. Seebohm's Monograph of the Thrushes (1900, imp. quarto); J. G. Millais' British Surface feeding Ducks (1902, folio); and the Hon. W. Rothschild's Extinct Birds (1907, quarto).

Most of the works lately named, being very costly, are not easily accessible. The few next to be mentioned, being of smaller size (octavo), may be within reach of more persons, and, therefore, can be passed over in a briefer fashion without detriment. In many ways, however, they are nearly as important. Swainson's Zoological Illustrations in three volumes, containing one hundred .

and eighty-two plates, whereof seventy represent birds, appeared between 1820 and 1821, and in 1829 a second series of the same was begun by him, which, extending to another three volumes, contained forty-eight more plates of birds out of one hundred and thirty-six, and was completed in 1833. All the figures were drawn by the author, who as an ornithological artist had no rival in his time. Every `plate is not beyond criticism, but his worst drawings show more knowledge of bird-life than do the best of his English or French contemporaries. A work of somewhat similar character, but one in which the letterpress is of greater value, is the Centurie zoologique of Lesson, a single volume that, though bearing the date 1830 on its title-page, is believed to have been begun in 1829, 1 and was certainly not finished until 1831. It received the benefit of Isidore Geoffroy St-Hilaire's assistance. Notwithstanding its name it only contains eighty plates, but of them forty-two, all by Pretre and in his usual stiff style, represent birds. Concurrently with this volume appeared Lesson's Traite d'ornithologie, which is dated 1831, and may perhaps be here most conveniently mentioned. Its professedly systematic form strictly relegates it to another group of works, but the presence of an " Atlas " (also in octavo) of one hundred and nineteen plates to some extent justifies its notice in this place. Between 1831 and 1834 the same author brought out, in continuation of his Centurie, his Illustrations de zoologie with sixty plates, twenty of which represent birds. In 1832 Kittlitz began to publish some Kup- fertafeln zur Naturgeschichte der Vogel, in which many new species are figured; but the work came to an end with its thirty-sixth plate in the following year. In 1845 Reichenbach commenced with his Praktische Naturgeschichte der Vogel the extraordinary series of illustrated publications which, under titles far too numerous here to repeat, ended in or about 1855, and are commonly known collectively as his Vollsteindigste Naturgeschichte der Vogel. 2 Herein are contained more than nine hundred coloured and more than one hundred uncoloured plates, which are crowded with the figures of birds, a large proportion of them reduced copies from other works, and especially those of Gould.

It now behoves us to turn to general and particularly systematic works in which plates, if they exist at all, form but an accessory to the text. These need not detain us for long, since, however well some of them may have been executed, regard being had to their epoch, and whatever repute some of them may have achieved, they are, so far as general information and especially classification is concerned, wholly obsolete, and most of them almost useless except as matters of antiquarian interest. It will be enough merely to name Dumeril's Zoologie analytique (1806) and Gravenhorst's Vergleichende Ubersicht des linneischen and einiger neuern zoologischen Shaw and Systeme (1807); nor need we linger over Shaw's General Zoology, a pretentious compilation continued by Stephens.

The last seven of its fourteen volumes include the Class A y es, and the first part of them appeared in 1809, but, the original author dying in 1815, when only two volumes of birds were published, the remainder was brought to an end in 1826 by his successor, who afterwards became well known as an entomologist. The engravings which these volumes contain are mostly bad copies, often of bad figures, though many are piracies from Bewick, and the whole is a most unsatisfactory performance. Of a very different kind is the next we have to notice, the Prodromus systematis mammalium et avium of Illiger, published at Berlin in 1811, which must in its day have been a valuable little manual, and on many points it may now be consulted to advantage - the characters of the genera being admirably given, and good explanatory lists of the technical terms of ornithology furnished. The classification was quite new, and made a step distinctly in advance of anything. that had before appeared.' In 1816 Vieillot published at Paris an Analyse d'une nouvelle ornithologie elementaire, containing a method of classification which he had tried in vain to get printed before, both in Turin and in London. 4 Some of the 1 In 1828 he had brought out, under the title of Manuel d'ornithologie, two handy duodecimos which are very good of their kind.

Technically speaking they are in quarto, but their size is so small that they may be well spoken of here. In 1879 Dr A. B. Meyer brought out an Index to them.

3 Illiger may be considered the founder of the school of nomenclatural purists. He would not tolerate any of the " barbarous " generic terms adopted by other writers, though some had been in use for many years.

4 The method was communicated to the Turin Academy, on 10th January 1814, and was ordered to be printed (Mem. Ac. Sc. Turin, ideas in this are said to have been taken from Illiger; but the two systems seem to be wholly distinct. Vieillot's was afterwards more fully expounded in the series of articles which he contributed between 1816 and 1819 to the second edition of the Nouveau dictionnaire d'histoire naturelle containing much valuable information. The views of neither of these systematizers pleased Temminck, who in 1817 replied rather sharply to Vieillot in some Observations sur la classification methodique des oiseaux, a pamphlet published at Amsterdam, and prefixed to the second edition m i nd. of his Manuel d'ornithologie, which appeared in 1820, an Analyse du systeme general d'ornithologie. This proved a great success, and his arrangement, though by no means simple, 5 was not only adopted by many ornithologists of almost every country, but still has some adherents. The following year Ranzani of Bologna, in his Elementi di zoologia - a very respectable compilation - came to treat of birds, and then followed to some extent the plan of De Blainville and Merrem (concerning which much more has to be said by and by), placing the Struthious birds in an Order by themselves. In 1827 Wagler brought out the first part of a Systema avium, in this form never completed, consisting of forty-nine detached monographs of as many genera, the species of which are most elaborately described. The arrangement he subsequently adopted for them and for other groups is to be found in his Natiirliches System der Amphibien (pp. 77-128), published in 1830, and is too fanciful to require any further attention. The several attempts at system-making by Kaup, from his Allgemeine Zoologie in 1829 to his fiber Classification der Vogel in 1849, were equally arbitrary and abortive; but his Skizzirte Entwickelungs-Geschichte in 1829 must be here named, as it is so often quoted on account of the number of new genera which the peculiar views he had embraced compelled him to invent. These views he shared more or less with Vigors and Swainson, and to them attention will be immediately especially invited, while consideration of the scheme gradually developed from 1831 onward by Charles Lucien Bonaparte, and still not without its influence, is deferred until we come to treat of the rise and progress of what we may term the reformed school of ornithology. Yet injustice would be done to one of the ablest of those now to be called the old masters of the science if mention. were not here made of the Conspectus generum avium, begun in 1850 by the naturalist last named, with the help of Schlegel, and unfortunately interrupted by its author's death six years later.s The systematic publications of George Robert Gray, so long in charge of the ornithological collection of the G. R. British Museum, began with A List of the Genera of Birds Gray. published in 1840. This, having been closely, though by no means in a hostile spirit, criticized by Strickland (Ann. Nat. History, vi. p. 410; vii. pp. 26 and 159), was followed by a second edition in 1841, in which nearly all the corrections of the reviewer were adopted, and in 1844 began the publication of The Genera of Birds, beautifully illustrated - first by Mitchell and afterwards by Mr Wolf - which will always keep Gray's name in remembrance. The enormous labour required for this work seems scarcely to have been appreciated, though it remains to this day one of the most useful books in an ornithologist's library. Yet it must be confessed that its author was hardly an ornithologist, but for the accident of his calling. He was a thoroughly conscientious clerk, devoted to his duty and unsparing of trouble. However, to have conceived the idea of executing a work on so grand a scale as this - it forms three folio volumes, and contains one hundred and eighty-five coloured and one hundred and forty-eight uncoloured plates, with references to upwards of two thousand four hundred generic names - was in itself a mark of genius, and it was brought to a successful conclusion in 1849. Costly as it necessarily was, it has been of great service to working ornithologists. In 1855 Gray brought out, as one of the Museum publications, A Catalogue of the Genera and Subgenera of Birds, a handy little volume, naturally founded on the larger works. Its chief drawback is that it does not give any more reference to the authority for a generic term than the name of its inventor and the year of its application, though of course more precise information would have at least doubled the size of the book. The same deficiency became still more apparent when, between 1869 and 1871, he published his Hand-List of Genera and Species of Birds in three 1813-1814, p. xxviii.); but, through the derangements of that stormy period, the order was never carried out (Mem. Accad. Sc. Torino, xxiii. p. xcvii.). The minute-book of the Linnean Society of London shows that his Prolusio was read at meetings of that Society between the 15th of November 1814 and the 21st of February 1815. Why it was not at once accepted is not told, but the entry respecting it, which must be of much later date, in the " Register of Papers " is " Published already." It is due to Vieillot to mention these facts, as he has been accused of publishing his method in haste to anticipate some of Cuvier's views, but he might well complain of the delay in London. Some reparation has been made to his memory by the reprinting of his Analyse by the Willughby Society.

5 He recognized sixteen Orders of Birds, while Vieillot had been content with five, and Iliiger with seven.

s To this very indispensable work a good index was supplied in 1865 by Dr Finsch.

Iliiger. octavo volumes (or parts, as they are called). Giebel's Thesaurus. ornithologiae, also in three volumes, published between 1872 and 1877, is a slight advance, but both works have been completely superseded by the British Museum Catalogue of Birds, the twenty-seventh and final volume of which was published in 1895, and by the compact and invaluable British Museum HandList, the four volumes of which were completed by Dr R. B. Sharpe in 1903.

It may be convenient here to deal with the theory of the Quinary System, which was promulgated with great zeal by its upholders during the end of the first and early part of the second quarter of the 19th century, and for some years seemed likely to carry all before it. The success it gained was doubtless due in some degree to the difficulty which most men had in comprehending it, for it was enwrapped in alluring mystery, but more to the confidence with which it was announced as being the long-looked-for key to the wonders of creation, since its promoters did not hesitate to term it the discovery of " the Natural System," though they condescended, by way of explanation to less exalted intellects than their own, to allow it the more moderate appellation of the Circular or, Quinary System.

A comparison of the relation of created beings to a number of intersecting circles is as old as the days of Nieremberg, who in 1635 wrote (Historia naturae, lib. iii. cap. 3) - " Nullus hiatus est, nulla fractio, nulla dispersio formarum, invicem connexa sunt velut annulus annulo "; but it is almost clear that he was thinking only of a chain. In 1806 Fischer de Waldheim, in his Tableaux syn- optiques de zoognosie (p. 181), quoting Nieremberg, extended his figure of speech, and, while justly deprecating the notion that the series of forms belonging to any particular group of creatures - the Mammalia was that whence he took his instance - could be placed in a straight line, imagined the various genera to be arrayed in a series of contiguous circles around Man as a centre. Though there is nothing to show that Fischer intended, by what is here said, to do anything else than illustrate more fully the marvellous interconnexion of different animals, or that he attached any realistic meaning to his metaphor, his words were eagerly caught up by the prophet of the new faith. This was William Sharpe Macleay, a man of education and real genius, who in 1819 and 1821 brought out a work under the title of Horae Entomoiogicae, which was soon after hailed by Vigors as containing a new revelation, and applied by him to ornithology in some vigoes. " Observations on the Natural Affinities that connect the Orders and Families of Birds," read before the Linnean Society of London in 1823, and afterwards published in its Transactions (xiv. pp. 395-5 1 7). In the following year Vigors returned to the subject in some papers published in the recently established Zoological Journal, and found an energetic condisciple and coadjutor in Swainson, who, for more than a dozen years - to the end, in fact, of his career as an ornithological writer was instant in season and out of season in pressing on all his readers the views he had, through Vigors, adopted from Macleay, though not without some modification of detail if not of principle. What these views were it would be manifestly improper for a sceptic to state except in the terms of a believer. Their enunciation must therefore be given in Swainson's own words, though it must be admitted that space cannot be found here for the diagrams, which it was alleged were necessary for the right understanding of the theory. This theory, as originally propounded by Macleay, was said by Swainson in 1835 (Geogr. and Classific. of Animals, p. 202) to have consisted of the following propositions: 1 " i. That the series of natural animals is continuous, forming, as it were, a circle; so that, upon commencing at any one given point, and thence tracing all the modifications of structure, we shall be imperceptibly led, after passing through numerous forms, again to the point from which we started.

" 2. That no groups are natural which do not exhibit, or show an evident tendency to exhibit, such a circular series.

" 3. That the primary divisions of every large group are ten, five of which are composed of comparatively large circles, and five of smaller: these latter being termed osculant, and being intermediate between the former, which they serve to connect.

" 4. That there is a tendency in such groups as are placed at the opposite points of a circle of affinity ` to meet each other.' " 5. That one of the five larger groups into which every natural circle is divided ` bears a resemblance to all the rest, or, more strictly speaking, consists of types which represent those of each of the four other groups, together with a type peculiar to itself.' " 1 We prefer giving them here in Swainson's version, because he seems to have set them forth more clearly and concisely than Macleay ever did, and, moreover, Swainson's application of them to ornithology - a branch of science that lay outside of Macleay's proper studies - appears to be more suitable to the present occasion.

As subsequently modified by Swainson (tom. cit. pp. 224, 225), the foregoing propositions take the following form: " I. That every natural series of beings, in its progress from a given point, either actually returns, or evinces a tendency to return, again to that point, thereby forming a circle.

" II. The primary circular divisions of every group are three actually, or five apparently.

" III. The contents of such a circular group are symbolically (or analogically) represented by the contents of all other circles in the animal kingdom.

" IV. That these primary divisions of every group are characterized by definite peculiarities of form, structure and economy, which, under diversified modifications, are uniform throughout the animal kingdom, and are therefore to be regarded as the primary types of nature.

" V. That the different ranks or degrees of circular groups exhibited in the animal kingdom are Nine k in number, each being involved within the other." Though, as above stated, the theory here promulgated owed its temporary success chiefly to the extraordinary assurance and pertinacity with which it was urged upon a public generally incapable of understanding what it meant, that it received some support from men of science must be admitted. A " circular system " was advocated by the eminent botanist Fries, and the views of Macleay met with the partial approbation of the celebrated entomologist Kirby, while at least as much may be said of the imaginative Oken, whose mysticism far surpassed that of the Quinarians. But it is obvious to every one who nowadays indulges in the profitless pastime of studying their writings that, as a whole, they failed in grasping the essential difference between homology (or " affinity," as they generally termed it) and analogy - though this difference had been fully understood and set forth by Aristotle himself - and, moreover, that in seeking for analogies on which to base their foregone conclusions they were often put to hard shifts. Another singular fact is that they often seemed to be totally unaware of the tendency if not the meaning of some of their own expressions: thus Macleay could write, and doubtless in perfect good faith (Trans. Linn. Society, xvi. p. 9, note), " Naturalists have nothing to do with mysticism, and but little with a priori reasoning." Yet his followers, if not he himself, were ever making use of language in the highest degree metaphorical, and were always explaining facts in accordance with preconceived opinions. Fleming, Fleming already the author of a harmless and extremely orthodox Philosophy of Zoology, pointed out in 1829 in the Quarterly Review (xli. pp. 302-327) some of the fallacies of Macleay's method, and in return provoked from him'a reply, in the form of a letter addressed to Vigors On the Dying Struggle of the Dichotomous System, couched in language the force of which no one even at the present day can deny, though to the modern naturalist its invective power contrasts ludicrously with the strength of its ratiocination. But, confining ourselves to what is here our special business, it is to be remarked that perhaps the heaviest blow dealt at these strange doctrines was that delivered by Rennie, who, in an edition of Montagu's Ornithological Dictionary (pp. xxxiii.-1v.), published in 1831 and again issued in 1833, attacked the Quinary System, and especially its application to ornithology by Vigors and Swainson, in a way that might perhaps have demolished it, had not the author mingled with his undoubtedly sound reason much that is foreign to any question with which a naturalist, as such, ought to deal - though that herein he was only following the example of one of his opponents, who had constantly treated the subject in like manner, is to be allowed. This did not hinder Swainson, who had succeeded in getting the ornithological portion of the first zoological work ever published at the expense of the British government (namely, the Fauna BorealiAmericana) executed in accordance with his own opinions, from maintaining them more strongly than ever in several of the volumes treating of Natural History which he contributed to the Cabinet Cyclopaedia - among others that from which we have just given some extracts - and in what may be deemed the culmination in England of the Quinary System, the volume of the " Naturalist's Library " on The Natural Arrangement and History of Flycatchers, published in 1838, of which unhappy performance mention has already been made in this present work (vol. x. p. 584, note). This seems to have been his last attempt; for, two years later, his Bibliography of Zoology shows little trace of his favourite theory, though nothing he had uttered in its support was retracted. Appearing almost simultaneously with this work, an article by Strickland (Mag. Nat. History, ser. 2, iv. pp. 2 19-226) entitled Observations upon the Affinities and Analogies of Organized Beings administered 'IV" to the theory a shock from which it never recovered, land. though attempts were now and then made by its adherents to revive it; and, even ten years or more later, Kaup, one of the few foreign ornithologists who had embraced Quinary principles, was by mistaken kindness allowed to publish Monographs of the Birds-of-Prey (Jardine's Contributions to Ornithology, 18 49, pp. 68 -75, 96-121; 1850, pp. 51-80; 1851, pp. 119-130; 1852, pp. 103-122; and Trans. Zool. Society, iv. pp. 201-260), in which its absurdity reached the climax.

The mischief caused by this theory of a Quinary System was very great, but was chiefly confined to Britain, for (as has been will be necessary to limit this survey, as before indicated, to those countries alone which form the homes of English people, or are commonly visited by them in ordinary travel.

Beginning with New Zealand, it is hardly needful to go further back than Sir W. L. Buller's beautiful Birds of New Zealand (4to, 1872- New 1873), with coloured plates by Keulemans, since the publi. cation of which the same author has issued a Manual of the Birds of New Zealand (8vo, 1882), founded on the former; but justice requires that mention be made of the labours of G. R. Gray, first in the Appendix to Dieffenbach's Travels in New Zealand (2843) and then in the ornithological portion of the Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. " Erebus " and " Terror," begun in 1864, but left unfinished from the following year until completed by Mr Sharpe in 1876. A considerable number of valuable papers on the ornithology of the country by Sir W. L. Buller, Drs Hector and Von Haast, F. W. Hutton, Mr Potts and others are to be found in the Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute. Sir W. L. Buller's Supplement to the Birds of New Zealand (1905-1906) completes the great work of this author.

Passing to Australia, we have the first good description of some of its birds in the several old voyages and in Latham's works before mentioned. Shaw's Zoology of New Holland (4to, 1794) added those of a few more, as did J. W. Lewin s Natural History of the Birds of New South Wales (4to, 1822), which reached a third edition in 1838. Gould's great Birds of Australia has been already named, and he subsequently reproduced with some additions the text of that work under the title of Handbook to the Birds of Australia (2 vols. 8vo, 1865). In 1866 Mr Diggles commenced a similar publication, The Ornithology of Australia, but the coloured plates, though fairly drawn, are not comparable to those of his predecessor. This is still incomplete, though the parts that have appeared have been collected to form two volumes and issued with title-pages. Some notices of Australian birds by Mr Ramsay and others are to be found in the Proceedings of the Linnaean Society of New South Wales and of the Royal Society of Tasmania. Coming to British Indian possessions, and beginning with Ceylon, we have Kelaart's Prodromus faunae Zeylanicae (8vo, 1852), and Ceylon. the admirable Birds of Ceylon by Captain Legge (4to, 1878-1880), with coloured plates by Mr Keulemans of all the peculiar species. It is hardly possible to name any book that has been more conscientiously executed than this. Blyth's Mammals and Birds of Burma (8vo, 1875) 2 contains much valuable information. Jerdon's Birds of India (8vo, 1862-1864; 1 A very useful list of more general scope is given as the Appendix to an address by Mr Sclater to the British Association in 1875 (Report, pt. ii. pp. 114-133).

2 This is a posthumous publication, nominally forming an extra number of the Journal of the Asiatic Society; but, since it was separately issued, it is entitled to notice here.

reprinted 1877) is a comprehensive work on the ornithology of the peninsula. A very fairly executed compilation on the subject by an anonymous writer is to be found in a late edition of the Cyclopaedia of India, published at Madras, and W. T.

Blanford's Birds of British India (1898)(1898) remains the standard work. Stray Feathers, an ornithological journal for India and its dependencies, contains many interesting and some valuable papers.

In regard to South Africa, besides the well-known work of Le Vaillant already mentioned, there is the second volume of Sir Andrew Smith's Illustrations of the Zoology of South Africa (4to, 1838-1842), which is devoted to birds. This Africa. is an important but cannot be called a satisfactory work.

Its one hundred and fourteen plates by Ford truthfully represent one hundred and twenty-two of the mounted specimens obtained by the author in his explorations into the interior. Layard's handy Birdsof South Africa (8vo, 1867), though by no means free from faults, has much to recommend it. A so-called new edition of it by R. B. Sharpe appeared in 1875-1884, but was executed on a plan so wholly different that it must be regarded as a distinct work. C. J. Andersson's Notes on the Birds of Damara Land (8vo, 1872), edited by J. H. Gurney, was useful in its day, but has been superseded by the more comprehensive and extremely accurate volumes, the Birds of Africa, by G. E. Shelley (1900-1907), and the German work on the same subject by Anton Reichenow (1900-1905).

Of special works relating to the British West Indies, C. Waterton's well-known Wanderings has passed through several editions since its first appearance in 1825, and must be mentioned here, West though, strictly speaking, much of the country he traversed was not British territory. To Dr Cabanis we are indebted for the ornithological results of Richard Schomburgh's researches given in the third volume (pp. 662-765) of the latter's Reisen im Britisch-Guiana (8vo, 1848), and then in Leotaud's Oiseaux de file de la Trinidad (8vo, 1866). Of the Antilles there is only to be named P. H. Gosse's excellent Birds of Jamaica (12mo, 1847), together with its Illustrations (sm. fol., 1849) beautifully executed by him. A nominal list, with references, of the birds of the island is contained in the Handbook of Jamaica. [An admirable " List of Faunal Publications relating to North American Ornithology " up to 1878 has been given by Elliott Coues as an appendix to his Birds of the Colorado Valley (pp. 567-784). Special mention should be made of the following works most of which have appeared since America. that time: S. F. Baird, T. M. Brewer and Robert Ridgway, History of North American Birds: The Land Birds (3. vols., Boston, 1875), The Water Birds (2 vols., Boston, 1884); Elliott Coues, Check List of North American Birds (Boston, 2882), Key to North American Birds (Boston, 1887), Birds of the Northwest, U.S. Geological Survey, Misc. pubs., No. 3 (2874) and Birds of the Colorado Valley, ibid, No. i i (2878); Robert Ridgway, Manual of North American Birds (Philadelphia, 1887); Frank M. Chapman, Color Key to North American Birds (New York, 1903); Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America (ibid, 1895) and The Warblers of North America (ibid, 1907), with notable coloured illustrations by L. A. Fuertes and Bruce Horsfall; Dr. A. K. Fisher, Hawks and Owls of the United States in their Relation to Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Bull. No. 3 (Washington, 1893), a very important work; D. G. Elliot, Gallinaceous Game Birds of North America (New York, 1897) and Wild Fowl of the United States and British Possessions (1898), and Robert Ridgway's learned and invaluable Birds of North and Middle America, published by the Smithsonian Institution, Bull. No. 50 (Washington, 1901 sqq.). Among contem p orary writers in a more popular style are John Burroughs; Herbert K. Job and A. R. Dugmore who have done much remarkable work in bird photography; Dallas Lore Sharp, Bradford Torrey, E. H. Parkhurst, Mrs Florence Merriam Bailey, Olive Thorne Miller (Mrs Harriet Mann Miller) and Mrs Mabel Osgood Wright. Alexander Wilson's American Ornithology, originally published beween 1808 and 1814, has gone through many editions including those issued in Great Britain, by Jameson (4 vols. 16 mo, 1831), and Jardine (3 vols. 8vo, 2832). The former of these has the entire text, but no plates; the latter reproduces the plates, but the text is in places much condensed, and excellent notes are added. A continuation of Wilson's work was issued by Bonaparte between 1825 and 1833, and most of the later editions include the work of both authors. The works of Audubon, and the Fauna Boreali-Americana of Richardson and Swainson have already been noticed, but they need naming here, as also do Nuttall's Manual of the Ornithology of the United States and of Canada (2 vols., Boston, 1832-1834; 2nd ed., 1840); and the Birds of Long Island (8 vo, New York, 1844) by J. P. Giraud, remarkable for its excellent account of the habits of shore-birds. The Bulletin of the Nuttall Ornithological Club was published from 1876 to 1884, when it was superseded by The Auk. A bi-monthly, Bird-Lore, established in 1899, is edited by Frank M. Chapman. A recent valuable work is that of Mary B. Beebe and C. W. Beebe, Our Search for a Wilderness (New York, 1910) which deals with the birds of Venezuela and British Guiana, while Central America is fully treated in the comprehensive and beautiful Biologia CentraliAmericana of F. du Cane Godman and O. Salvin (2898-2905). X.] Returning to the Old World, we have first Iceland, the fullest-indeed the only full-account of the birds of which is already stated) the extraordinary views of its adherents found little favour on the continent of Europe. The purely artificial character of the System of Linnaeus and his successors had been perceived, and men were at a loss to find a substitute for it. The new doctrine, loudly proclaiming the discovery of a " Natural" System, led away many from the steady practice which should have followed the teaching of Cuvier (though he in ornithology had not been able to act up to the principles he had lain down) and from the extended study of Comparative Anatomy. Moreover, it veiled the honest attempts that were making both in France and Germany to find real grounds for establishing an improved state of things, and consequently the labours of De Blainville, Etienne, Geoffroy St-Hilaire and L'Herminier, of Merrem, Johannes Muller and Nitzsch-to say nothing of others-were almost wholly unknown on this side of the Channel, and even the value of the investigations of British ornithotomists of high merit, such as Macartney and Pvlacgillivray, was almost completely overlooked. True it is that there were not wanting other men in these islands whose common sense refused to accept the metaphorical doctrine and the mystical jargon of the Quinarians, but so strenuously and persistently had the Laster asserted their infallibility, and so vigorously had they assailed any who ventured to doubt it, that most peaceable ornithologists found it best to bend to the furious blast, and in some sort to acquiesce at least in the phraseology of the self-styled interpreters of Creative Will. But, while thus lamenting this unfortunate perversion into a mistaken channel of ornithological energy, we must not overblame those who caused it. Macleay indeed never pretended to a high position in this branch of science, his tastes lying in the direction of Entomology; but few of their countrymen knew more of birds than did Swainson and Vigors; and, while the latter, as editor for many years of the Zoological Journal, and the first secretary of the Zoological Society, has especial claims to the regard of all zoologists, so the former's indefatigable pursuit of Natural History, and conscientious labour in its behalf-among other ways by means of his graceful pencil-deserve to be remembered as a