sibley: ornithology 647 



Ornithological Monographs 



The results of most original research today are customarily published in the 

 periodical journals. This material is often widely scattered and frequently 

 unavailable or unknown to many interested persons. Fortunately, it is also cus- 

 tomary for specialists to syntliesize the numerous research papers and to pro- 

 duce books which summarize their fields of endeavor. In ornithology there are 

 innumerable books dealing with the distribution and occurrence of the birds of 

 areas ranging in size from a university campus to the world itself. These vary 

 from mere lists to extensive compendia containing enormous amounts of in- 

 formation. There have been far fewer books devoted to such subjects as be- 

 havior, anatomy, and other phases of avian biology. 



Books which fall into these categories number in the thousands. Rather than 

 try to cite numerous examples and thereby omit reference to many equally 

 worthy of inclusion, it seems better to single out a few major works published 

 before 1900 and to give more space to the important volumes of the past fifty 

 years. Volumes which have been noted elsewhere in this chapter will not usually 

 again be cited. 



The general faunistic works on European birds are seemingly endless. The 

 British Isles have been especially prolific of local faunal compilations. Follow- 

 ing in the footsteps of William Yarrell (b. 1784, d. 1856), whose History of 

 British Birds (1837-1843) was long the standard, was Howard Saunders (b. 

 1835, d. 1907), who brought Yarrell's work up to date in 1889 and further re- 

 vised it in 1899. Today the standard work is the five-volume Handbook of H. F. 

 Witherby and his collaborators (rev. ed., 1943). This remarkable compilation 

 has no parallel in English but is in some ways comparable to the work of the 

 Heinroths (1926-1928) on central European birds. Germany, too, has pro- 

 duced a spate of faunal treatises. Niethammer's recent (1937-1942) three- 

 volume handbook is outstanding. 



For Europe in general there is the magnificant nine-volume treatise by Dres- 

 ser (1871-1890) and Hartert's (1903-1923) scholarly three volumes on pale- 

 arctic birds. 



African birds have been the subject of numerous books. Hartlaub (1857), 

 Finsch and Hartlaub (1870), Shelley (1896-1912), Bannerman (1930-1951), 

 and Chapin (1932-1939) are among the many contributors. 



The English extended their interest in natural history to all parts of the 

 British Empire. The ornithological volumes of The Fauna of British India 

 (1889-1898) were prepared by E. W. Gates and W. T. Blanford. In 1922 E. C. 

 Stuart Baker published the first volume of a revised edition of this work. 



Australian birds were first extensively described in a monograph by John 

 Gould (b. 1804, d. 1881), whose seven volumes (1840-1848) were illustrated with 

 600 hand-colored plates and followed by a supplement containing 81 more (1851- 

 1869). In spite of his unfortunate prolixity for generic splitting the work of 

 Gregory H. Mathews (b. 1870, d. 1949) is pre-eminent in Australian ornithology. 

 His twelve large volumes (1910-1928) are among the last of the elaborately il- 

 lustrated extensive faunal monographs. 



The birds of New Zealand were treated by Walter L. Buller (b. 1838, d. 

 1906) in 1872-1873 and more recently (1930) by W. R. B. Oliver. 



