ORNITHOLOGY 



Bij CHAELES G. SIBLEY 



Cornell University 



The first half of our Century of Progress was, for ornithology, concerned 

 almost entirely with systematics. Collections were growing, new species were 

 still being described with frequency, and the description of the unknown multi- 

 tude of subspecies had barely begun. Most attempts to interpret the sigificance 

 of behavior met with failure because the necessary premises had not yet been 

 developed. 



The study of natural history was peculiarly typical of northern Europe. 

 England and Germany produced a majority of the naturalists of the time. The 

 expansion of the colonial empires of the European nations resulted in extensive 

 travel and the establishment of many private fortunes. With the tradition estab- 

 lished and the means available it was a logical consequence that the study of 

 birds should prosper. 



Knowledge of North American birds prior to 1850, was largely due to the 

 work of Alexander "Wilson, Charles Lucien Bonaparte, William Swainson, John 

 James Audubon, and Thomas Nuttall. Others there were, but these five pro- 

 duced the most extensive publications and illustrations. With Audubon's death 

 in 1851, the pioneer era in American ornithology came to a close. 



By 1853 ornithology was past its infancy. Few indeed were the major areas 

 of the earth from which collections had not found their way to Europe or 

 America. In Germany Herman Schlegel had recently (1844a, 1844b) begun to 

 employ trinomials to designate geographic races and in a country house in Eng- 

 land Charles Darwin was quietly working on a book (1859) which was to ini- 

 tiate great controversies and provide the stimulus for intensified research in 

 all fields of biology for the next century. 



There is a curious parallel between the histories of two German clerics of the 

 1860's. Both Gregor Mendel and Bernard Altum were ahead of their time. The 

 importance of Mendel's now famous work (1865) went unrecognized for over 

 thirty years, while Altum 's concept of territory (1868) was not "discovered" 

 until after H. Eliot Howard (1920) had independently arrived at similar 

 conclusions. 



The last part of the nineteenth century was marked by numerous local fau- 

 nal treatises, especially in Europe, and by the issuance of elaborate monographs 

 on various groups of birds. At the halfway point in our century, Robert Ridg- 

 way (1901, p. 1) epitomized the prevailing viewpoint of the time when he wrote: 



There are two essentially different kinds of ornithology: systematic or scientific, and 

 popular. The former deals with the structure and classification of birds, their synonymies 

 and technical descriptions. The latter treats of their habits, songs, nesting, and other facts 

 pertaining to their life-histories. . . . Popular ornithology is the more entertaining, with 

 its savor of the wildwood, green fields, the riverside and seashore, bird songs, and the 



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