648 ^ CENTURY OF PROGRESS IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES 



The avifaunas of most Asiatic countries have been treated in monographs. 

 Many of these are listed by Casey Wood in his Introduction to the Literature 

 of Vertebrate Zoology (1931, pp. 77-78). 



Among the numerous faunal works on New AVorkI birds is the detailed sys- 

 tematic treatment of the birds of North and Middle America (1901-1950) by 

 Eobert Ridgway (b. 1850, d. 1929), which has been continued since Ridgway's 

 death by Herbert Friedmann. In 1918, Charles B. Cory (b. 1857, d. 1921) be- 

 gan the publication of an extensive catalogue of all of the species and subspecies 

 of the Americas and adjacent islands. This work was continued by Charles E. 

 Hellmayr (b. 1878, d. 1944) after Cory had completed two volumes. The last 

 four of the fifteen volumes were finally finished by H. B. Conover from Hell- 

 mayr's manuscript. 



The ''Aves" volumes of the Biologia Centrali- Americana (1879-1904) by Sal- 

 vin and Godman described over 1,400 species of Central American birds. The 

 authors, opponents of trinominal nomenclature, maintained a consistently bi- 

 nominal treatment in their work. Among more recent systematic treatments of 

 Central American birds is that of Dickey and van Rossem on El Salvador (1938) . 



The books by Sclater and W. H. Hudson (1888-1889) and by W. H. Hudson 

 (1920) on Argentine birds are among the best known of many volumes on South 

 American birds. Among recently active workers have been John T. Zimmer on 

 Peruvian birds (1931, et seq.) and AVilliam H. Phelps and William H. Phelps, Jr., 

 mainly on the birds of Venezuela. 



To date there has been only one attempt to describe all of the known species 

 of birds in the world. It was the indefatigable Richard Bowdler Sharpe (b. 

 1847, d. 1909) who set this as his task shortly after he succeeded G. R. Gray as 

 keeper of the bird collection of the British Museum (Natural History) in 1872. 

 The first volume of the Catalogue of the Birds in the British Museum ap- 

 peared in 1874. Of its twenty-seven volumes Sharpe himself wrote fourteen. 

 Among others who contributed volumes to this remarkable undertaking were 

 P. L. Sclater, G. E. Shelley, T. A. Salvadori, 0. Salvin, and E. Hartert. These 

 volumes include plumage descriptions, synonyms, references, and distributional 

 information. 



Sharpe's Hand-list (1899-1909) was also the first world-wide check-list. In 

 1931, James Lee Peters (b. 1889, d. 1952) published the first volume of his 

 Check-list of Birds of the World, seven volumes of which had been completed 

 by 1951. In terms of numbers of species this is approximately the halfway point. 



Elaborately illustrated monographs of genera, families, or orders were pro- 

 duced in numbers during the latter part of the nineteenth century. John Gould 

 (b. 1804, d. 1881) wrote and illustrated a number of famous works of this na- 

 ture including the hummingbirds (1849-1861), which occupied five volumes and 

 contained 360 colored plates. Otto Finsch (b. 1839, d. 1917) wrote a monograph 

 on the parrots of the world (1867-1868), which is still the most complete ac- 

 count of the group. In the United States, Daniel Giraud Elliot (b. 1835, d. 

 1915) has published monographs on the grouse (1864-1865), the pheasants 

 (1870-1872), the hornbills (1877-1882), the North American shore-birds (1895), 

 and several other groups. 



More recent monographic treatment has been accorded the pheasants by 

 Beebe (1918-1922) and by Delacour (1951), the birds 9f prey by Sw^ann and 



