JO DICTIONARY OF BIRDS 



Zoologia — a very respectable compilation — came to treat of Birds, and 

 then followed to some extent the plan of De BlainviUe and Merrem 

 (concerning which much more has to be said by and by) placing the 

 "Struthious" Birds in an Order by themselves.^ In 1827 Wagler 

 brought out the first part of a Sy sterna Avium, in this form never com- 

 pleted, consisting of 49 detaclied monographs of as many genera, 

 the species of which are most elaborately described. The arrangement 

 he subsequently adopted for them and for other groups is to be found 

 in his Natiirliches System der Amphibien (pp. 77-128), published in 1830, 

 and is too fanciful to require any further attention. The several attempts 

 at system-making by Kaup, from his Allgemeine Zoologie in 1829 to his 

 Ueber Classification der Vogel in 1849, were equally arbitrary and abortive ; 

 but his Skizzirte Entwickelungs-Geschichte in 1829 must be here named, as 

 it is so often quoted on account of the number of new genera which the 

 peculiar views he had embraced compelled him to invent. These views 

 he shared more or less with Vigors and Swainson, and to them attention 

 will be immediately especially invited, while consideration of the scheme 

 gradually developed from 1831 onward by Charles Lucien Bonaparte, 

 and still not without its influence, is deferred until we come to treat of 

 the rise and progress of what we may term the reformed school of Ornitho- 

 logy. Yet injustice would be done to one of the ablest of those now to 

 be called the old masters of the science if mention were not here made of 

 the Conspectus Crenerwrn J.mwm, begun in 1850 by the naturalist last named, 

 with the help of Schlegel, and unfortunately interrupted by its author's 

 death six years later.^ The systematic publications of George Robert 

 Gray, so long in charge of the ornithological collection of the British 

 Museum, began with A List of the Genera of Birds published in 1840. 

 This, having been closely, though by no means in a hostile spirit, 

 criticized by Strickland {Ann. Nat. Hist. vi. p. 410 ; vii. pp. 26 and 159), 

 was followed by a Second Edition in 1841, in which nearly all the 

 corrections of the reviewer were adopted, and in 1844 began the publica- 

 tion of TJie Genera of Birds, beautifully illustrated — first by Mitchell and 

 afterwards by Mr. Wolf — which will always keep Gray's name in 

 remembrance. The enormous labour required for this work seems 

 scarcely to have been appreciated, though it remains to this day one of 

 the most useful books in an ornithologist's library. Yet it must be 

 confessed that its author was hardly an ornithologist but for the accident 

 of his calling. He was a thoroughly conscientious clerk, devoted to his 

 duty and unsparing of trouble. However, to have conceived the idea of 

 executing a work on so grand a scale as this— it forms three folio volumes, 

 and contains 185 coloured and 148 uncoloured plates, with references to 

 upwards of 2400 generic names — was in itself a mark of genius, and it 

 was brought to a successful conclusion in ] 849.^, Costly as it necessarily 



1 The classification of Latreille in 1825 {Families Naturelles du Regne Animal, 

 pp. 67-88) needs naming only, for the author, great as an entomologist, had no special 

 knowledge of Birds, and his greatest merit, that of placing Opisthocomus next to the 

 Gallinse, was perhaps a happy accident. 



2 To this indispensable work a good index was supplied in 1865 by Dr. Finsch. 



^ Capt. Thomas Browne's Illustration of the Genera of Birds, begun in 1845 in 

 imitation of Gray's work, is discreditable to all concerned with it. It soon ceased to 



