INTRODUCTION /j 



better than any which it superseded, though this view is gained by follow- 

 ing the methods which Cuvier taught. In the work just mentioned few 

 details are given ; but even the more elaborate classification of Birds 

 contained in his Lemons d'Anatomie Oompar^e of 1805 is based wholly on 

 external characters, such as had been iised by nearly all his predecessors ; 

 and the Regne Animal of 1817, when he was in his fullest vigour, afforded 

 not the least evidence that he had ever dissected a couple even of Birds ^ 

 with the object of determining their relative position in his system, which 

 then, as before, depended wholly on the configuration of bills, wings and 

 feet. But, though apparently without such a knowledge of the anatomy 

 of Birds as would enable him to apply it to the formation of that natural 

 system which he was fully aware had yet to be sought, he seems to have 

 been an excellent judge of the characters afforded by the bill and limbs, 

 and the use he made of them, coupled with the extraordinary reputation 

 he acquired on other grounds, procured for his system the adhesion for 

 many years of the majority of ornithologists. Eegret must always be 

 felt by them that his great genius was never applied in earnest to their 

 branch of study, especially when we consider that had it been so the 

 perversion of energy in regard to the classification of Birds witnessed in 

 England for nearly twenty years, and presently to be mentioned, would 

 most likely have been prevented.^ 



Hitherto mention has chiefly been made of works on General Orni- 

 thology, but it will be understood that these were largely aided by the 

 enterprise of travellers, and as there were many of them who published 

 their narratives in separate forms, their contributions have to be considered. 

 Of those travellers, then, the first to be here especially named is Marsigli, 

 the fifth volume of whose Danuhius Pannonico-Mysicus is devoted to the 

 Birds he met with in the valley of the Danube, and appeared at the 

 Hague in 1725, followed by a French translatiou in 1744.^ Most of the 

 many pupils whom Linna3us sent to foreign countries submitted their 

 discoveries to him, but the respective travels of Kalm, Hasselqvist and 

 Osbeck in North America, the Levant and China were published separ- 

 ately.* The incessant journeys of Pallas and his colleagues — Falk, 

 Georgi, J. G. and S. G. Gmelin, Giildenstiidt, Lepechin and others — in 



'^ So little regard did he pay to the Osteology of Birds that, according to De 

 Blainville {Jour, de Phys. xcii. p. 187, note), the skeleton of a Fowl to which was 

 attached the head of a Hornbill was for a long tinae exhibited in the Museum of 

 Comparative Anatomy at Paris ! Yet, in order to determine the difference of struc- 

 ture in their organs of voice, Cuvier, as he says in his Lepns (iv. p. 464), dissected 

 more than 150 species of Birds, Unfortunately for him, as will appear in the sequel, 

 it seems not to have occurred to him to use any of the results he obtained as the basis 

 of a classification. 



- It is unnecessary to enumerate the various editions of the Regne Animal. Of 

 the English translations, that edited by Griffiths and Pidgeon is the most complete. 

 The ornithological portion of it, contained in three volumes, received many additions 

 from John Edward Gray, and appeared in 1829, but even at that time must have been 

 lamentably deficient. 



^ Though much later in date, the Iter per Poseganam Sclavonic of Piller and 

 Mitterpacher, published at Buda in 1783, may perhaps be here most conveniently 

 mentioned. 



■* The results of Forskal's travels in the Levant, published after his death by 

 Niebuhr, require mention, though the ornithology they contain is but scant. 



