INTRODUCTION 2Q 



obsolete, and most of them almost useless except as matters of antiquarian 

 interest. It will be enough merely to name Dumeril's Zoologie Analytique 

 (1806) and Gravenborst's Vergleichende Uebersicht des linneischen und einiger 

 neuern zoologischen Systeme (1807); nor need we linger over Shaw's 

 General Zoology, a pretentious compilation continued by Stephens. The 

 last seven of its fourteen volumes include the Class Aves, and the first 

 part of them appeared in 1809, but, the original author dying in 1815, 

 when only two volumes of Birds were published, the remainder was 

 brought to an end in 1826 by his successor, who afterwards became 

 well known as an entomologist. The engravings which these volumes 

 contain are mostly bad copies, often of bad figures, though many are 

 piracies from Bewick, and the whole is a most unsatisfactory performance. 

 Of a very different kind is the next we have to notice, the Prodromus 

 Systematis Mammalium et Avium of Illiger, published at Berlin in 1811, 

 which must in its day have been a valuable little manual, and on many 

 points it may now be consulted to advantage — the characters of the 

 genera being admirably given, and good explanatory lists of the technical 

 terms of Ornithology furnished. The classification was quite new, and 

 made a step distinctly in advance of anything that had before appeared.^ 

 In 1816 Vieillot published at Paris an Analyse d'une nouvelle Ornithologie 

 d^mentaire, containing a method of classification which he had tried in 

 vain to get printed before, both in Turin and in London.^ Some of the 

 ideas in this are said to have been taken from Illiger ; but the two 

 systems seem to be wholly distinct. Vieillot's was afterwards more 

 fully expounded in the series of articles which he contributed between 

 1816 and 1819 to the Second Edition of the Nouveau Didionnaire 

 d'Histoire 'Naturelle, containing much valuable information. The views 

 of neither of these systematizers pleased Temminck, who in 1817 replied 

 rather sharply to Vieillot in some Observations sur la Classification mdho- 

 dique des Oiseaux, a pamphlet published at Amsterdam, and prefixed to 

 the second edition of his Manuel d' Ornithologie, which appeared in 1820, 

 an Analyse du Systeme General d' Ornithologie. This proved a great success, 

 and his arrangement, though by no means simple,^ was not only adopted 

 by many ornithologists of almost every country, but still has some 

 adherents. The following year Ranzani of Bologna, in his Elementi di 



^ Illiger may be considered the founder of the school of nomenclatural purists. 

 He would not tolerate any of the " barbarous " generic terms adopted by other writers, 

 though some had been in use for many years. 



2 The method was communicated to the Turin Academy, 10th January 1814, and 

 was ordered to be printed (Mem. Ac. Sc. Turin, 1813-14, p. xxviii.) ; but, through 

 the derangements of that stormy period, the order was never carried out [Mevi. Accad. 

 Sc. Torino, xxiii. p. xcvii.). The minute-book of the Linnean Society of London shews 

 that his Prolusio was read at meetings of that Society between 15th November 1814 

 and 21st February 1815. Why it was not at once accepted is not told, but the entry 

 respecting it, which must be of much later date, in the "Register of Papers" is 

 " Published already." It is due to Vieillot to mention these facts, as he has been 

 accused of publishing his method in haste to anticipate some of Cuvier's views, but he 

 might well complain of the delay in London. Some reparation has been made to his 

 memory by the reprinting of his Analyse by the Willughby Society. 



^ He recognized sixteen Orders of Birds, while Vieillot had been content with five, 

 and Illiger with seven. 



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