xiv HISTORICAL PREFACE. 



first really great work to come under our notice ; its influence was immediate, and is even 

 now felt. It is the " Audubon " of that time ; a folio in two volumes, dating respectively 

 1731 and 1743, with an appendix, 1748 ; passing to a second edition in 1754, to a 

 third in 1771, under the supervision of Edwards ; reproduced in Germany, in " Selig- 

 mann's Sammlung," 1 749-76. It was published in parts, the date of the first of which 

 I believe to have been 1730, though it may have been a little earlier. Volume I, contain- 

 ino- the birds, appears to have been issued in five parts, and was made up in 1731 ; it consists 

 of a hundred colored plates of birds, with as many leaves of text ; a few more birds are 

 given in the appendix, raising the number to 113. These illustrations are recognizable 

 almost without exception ; most of the species are for the first time described and figured ; 

 they furnish the basis of many subsequently named in the Linnfean system ; the work 

 was eventually provided by Edwards with a Linnsean concordance or index ; and alto- 

 gether it is not easy to overestimate the significance of the Catesbian period, due to this 

 one work ; for no other book requires or indeed deserves to be mentioned in the same 

 connection, though a few contributions, of somewhat "archaic" character, were made by 

 various writers. 



(1748-1758.) 

 The Edwardsian Period. — This bridges the interval between Catesby and the estab- 

 lishment of the binomial nomenclature, and finishes the Pre-Linnsean epoch. No great 

 name of exclusive pertinence to Xorth American ornithology appears in this decade. 

 But the great naturalist whose name is inseparably associated with that of Catesby had 

 begun in 1741 the " Natural History of Uncommon Birds," which he completed in four 

 parts or volumes, in 1751, and in which the North American element is conspicuous. 

 This work contains two hundred and ten colored plates, with accompanying text, forming 

 a treatise which easily ranks among the half-dozen greatest works of the kind of the Pre- 

 Linnsean epoch, and passed through several editions in difi"erent languages. Its impress 

 upon American ornithology of the time is second only to that made by Catesby's, of 

 which it was the natural sequence, if not consequence It bore similarly upon birds soon 

 to be described in binomial terms, and was shortly followed by the not less famous 

 "Gleanings of Natural History," 1758-64, a work of precisely the same character, and in 

 fact a continuation of the former. Edwards also made some of our birds the subject of 

 special papers before the Philosophical Society, as those of 1755 and 1758 upon the 

 Euff"ed Grouse and the Phalarope. It may be noted here that one of the few special papers 

 upon any American bird which Linnaeus published appeared in this period, he having in 

 1750 first described the Louisiana Nonpareil (Passerina ciris). This period also saw the 

 publication of part of the original Swedish edition of Peter Kalm's "Travels," 1753-61, 

 which went through numerous editions in difierent languages. Kalm was a correspondent 

 of Linnseus ; the genus of plants, Kalmia, commemorates his name ; his work contains 

 accounts of many of our birds, some of them the bases of Linnsean species ; and he also 

 published, in 1759, a special paper upon the Wild Pigeon. As in the Catesbian period, 

 various lesser contributions were made, but none requiring comment. Tlius Lawson, 

 as representing the continuation of a preceding epoch, and the associated names of 

 Catesby and Edwards in the present one, have carried us past the middle of the last 

 century. 



