334 Mr. H. E. Strickland on the Earl of Derby's 



into the first volume. It was this circumstance which con- 

 ferred on these drawings a far greater value than they would 

 intrinsically have possessed. Dr. Latham not only wrote on 

 each drawing with his own hand the name which he intended 

 the species to retain, but drew up from these designs a great 

 number of original specific descriptions, which he published 

 for the first time in the second Supplement of his c Synopsis/ 

 4to, London, 1802, and which are repeated in his 'General 

 History of Birds,' and in the works of Shaw, Vieillot and other 

 compilers. But inasmuch as many of the drawings are but 

 rude and unscientific copies of nature, and the descriptions 

 are often very vague copies of the drawings, these nominal 

 species have hitherto lain in great obscurity, which will now 

 be in great measure removed by the fortunate discovery, at 

 Mr. Lambert's death, of the original designs. 



The plates 121, 122, 126, 127, 129, 131, 134, 136 and 139 

 of Latham's second Supplement are copies, more or less exact, 

 of some of these drawings ; and it further appears that a M. 

 Francillon, a French artist, copied others of them early in the 

 present century, as some of the plates in Vieillot's ( Oiseaux 

 Dorees,' said to be from M. Francillon's designs, are manifest 

 copies from this collection. From that time till very recently 

 the "New South Wales Drawings" remained in oblivion, to 

 the no small inconvenience of the science, for had Messrs. Vi- 

 gors and Horsfield and other writers on Australian ornitho- 

 logy had an opportunity of consulting them, it would have 

 saved us many superfluous synonyms and cleared up many 

 difficulties. 



These remarks, it is hoped, will prove the great value of 

 original drawings when they have been used as the basis of 

 specific descriptions. How much useless lumber was removed 

 from zoology by the valuable memoir of Li chten stein on the 

 original designs for Marcgrave's ' History of Brazil,' now pre- 

 served at Berlin ! (See Oken's e Isis,' 1820.) And Mr. Gray 

 would confer an equal boon if he would give us a catalogue 

 raisonnee of the yet unpublished drawings made by Forster 

 during Capt. Cook's voyage, and preserved in the British 

 Museum. There are also numerous unascertained species 

 described by Latham from drawings once belonging to Lady 

 Impey, Gen. Davies, and other persons, which, if they could 

 be now discovered, would prove of the utmost value to modern 

 science. Let me hope that these observations may aid in 

 bringing some of these lost documents to light, and in sub- 

 mitting them to the criticisms of zoologists. 



I now proceed to make some specific remarks by way of a 

 commentary and supplement to Mr. Gray's paper, premising 



