INTRODUCTION 23 



wings, the Cock-of-the-Rock (Rupicola) and what not besides. The 

 plates in this last are by Barraband, for many years regarded as the 

 perfection of ornithological artists, and indeed the figures, when they 

 happen to have been drawn from the life, are not bad ; but his skill was 

 quite unable to vivify the preserved specimens contained in Museums, 

 and when he had only these as subjects he simply copied the distortions 

 of the " bird-stuffer." The following year, 1808, being aided by Tem- 

 minck of Amsterdam, of whose son we shall presently hear more, Le 

 Vaillant brouglit out the sixth volume of his Oiseaux d'Afrique, already 

 mentioned. Four more volumes of this work were promised ; but the 

 means of executing them were denied to him, and, though he lived until 

 1824, his publications ceased. 



A similar series of works was projected and begun about the same 

 time as that of Le Vaillant by Audebert and Vieillot, though the former, 

 who was by profession a painter and illustrated the work, had died more 

 than a year before the appearance of the two volumes, bearing date 

 1802, and entitled Oiseaux dores ou a reflets m^talliques, the effect of the 

 plates in which he sought to heighten by the use of gilding. The first 

 volume contains the " Colibris, Oiseaux -mouches, Jacamars et Pro- 

 merops," the second the " Grimpereaux " and " Oiseaux de Paradis " — 

 associations which set all the laws of systematic method at defiance. 

 His colleague, Vieillot, brought out in 1805 a Histoire Naturelle des plus 

 beaux Ghanteurs de la Zone Torride with figures by Langlois of tropical 

 Finches, Grosbeaks, Buntings and other hard-billed Birds; and in 1807 

 two volumes of a Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux de I'Am^rique Septen- 

 trionale, without, however, paying much attention to the limits commonly 

 assigned by geographers to that part of the world. In 1805 Anselme 

 Desmarest published a Histoire Naturelle des Tangaras, des Manaldns et 

 des Todlers, which, though belonging to the same category as all the 

 former, difters from them in its more scientific treatment of the subjects 

 to which it refers ; and, in 1808, Temminck, whose father's aid to Le 

 Vaillant has already been noticed, brought out at Paris a Histoire Naturelle 

 des Pigeons, illustrated by Madame Knip, who had drawn the plates for 

 Desmarest's volume.^ 



Since we have begun by considering these large illustrated works in 

 which the text is made subservient to the coloured plates, it may be 

 convenient to continue our notice of such others of similar character as 

 it may be expedient to mention here, though thereby we shall be led 

 somewhat far afield. Most of them are but luxuries, and there is some 

 degree of truth in the remark of Andreas Wagner in his Report on the 

 Progress of Zoology for 1843, drawn up for the Ray Society (p. 60), that 

 they " are not adapted for the extension and promotion of science, but 

 must inevitably, on account of their unnecessary costliness, constantly 

 tend to reduce the number of naturalists who are able to avail them- 

 selves of them, and they thus enrich ornithology only to its ultimate 



■^ Temminck subsequently reproduced, with many additions, the text of this 

 volume in his Histoire Naturelle des Pigeons et des Gallinacees, published at Am- 

 sterdam in 1813-15, in 3 vols. 8vo. Between 1838 and 1848 Florent-Provost brought 

 out at Paris a further set of illustrations of Pigeons by Mdme. Knip. 



