Review of M. 0. Dcs Murs' ' Oologie Oruithologique.' 327 



To come nearer to our immediate subject, M. Des Murs also 

 formed a cabinet of birds' eggs, which is stated to have con- 

 tained specimens of the eggs of upwards of 800 species. This 

 was, some years since, purchased by Dr. T.B.Wilson, and, with that 

 gentleman's usual liberality, presented to the Academy of Na- 

 tural Sciences at Philadelphia, where it now forms the nucleus 

 of one of the most extensive collections of these interesting objects 

 in existence. M. Des Murs has thus deservedly earned for himself 

 the reputation of being one of the most experienced of living oolo- 

 gists, and consequently his opinions on the subject of which he 

 treats in the work before us are entitled to great weight. 



With these preliminary remarks, we will now endeavour to 

 give, as succinctly as possible, an analysis of the ' Oologie 

 Ornithologique.' After a few pages of preface and introduc- 

 tion, we are presented with a compendious bibliography of 

 Oology — a study we perfectly agree with our author as having 

 barely escaped from infancy. " Comme science, on comme 

 complement de la science ornithologique, I'oologie est presque 

 entierement a creer" (Introd. p. xvi.). While our best thanks 

 are due to M. Des Murs for the ample catalogue of ornithological 

 works which he has furnished to us, we must, nevertheless, take 

 the liberty of questioning one of his assertions, and of claiming 

 for a fellow-countrymen of our own the honour of being the first 

 egg-collector, which he assigns to the Comte de Marsigli. Our 

 author states that "\es collections oologiques ne se font jour 

 que vers la premiere moitie du xviii^ siecle." Now it is per- 

 fectly certain that more than fifty years previously, the immortal 

 author of the ' Religio Medici ' and the * Enquiries into Vulgar 

 Errours,' Sir Thomas Browne, had assigned a place in his cabi- 

 net of rarities to a collection of birds' eggs. The delightful 

 Diary of John Evelyn duly records the fact, that in October 

 1671 its accomplished writer journeyed "in my Lord Henry 

 Howard's flying chariot " from the sloping lawns of Euston to 

 visit the good city of Norwich ; and the virtual founder of the 

 Royal Society especially mentions among the sights he saw 

 there, this evidence of what perhaps appeared to him only as a 

 school-boy predilection of the worthy knight*. 



* Evelyn's Diary, Bray's edition, 1850, vol. ii. p. 66. 

 VOL. II. 2 A 



