The Linnea7i Epoch (1735-1800). 



In this time the Science was reduced to order, for the successors 

 of Liniiffius did but incorporate the additional material which accumu- 

 lated through the works of Daubenton, Buff on, Latham, and others, 

 the results being always summarized on the Linnean plan. 



The Cuvierian Epoch (1800-1860). 



The activity of the French naturalists in the early part of the present 

 century was so marked, and the calibre of the zoologists of France was 

 so overpowering, that the Paris Museum became the centre from which 

 most of the ornithological work of those days emanated, while the voyages 

 undertaken by the French Government resulted in an accumulation of 

 specimens which was not to be rivalled in the national museum of any 

 other country. Besides Cuvier himself, there were several of his pupils 

 and contemporaries who outstripped him in ornithological knowledge, 

 and in 1889 I saw in the hands of Mr. Boucard the correspondence of 

 Vieillot with the Comte de Riocour, showing that the former must have 

 been a man of wide ornithological knowledge, as indeed his articles in 

 the ' Nouveau Dictionnaire ' prove him to have been. With Vieillot, 

 Ijevaillant, and Lesson at work in France, a great deal was accomplished ; 

 but the chief interest, so far as concerns our present subject, centres 

 round the classification of Cuvier, which, in spite of slight modifications, 

 prevailed down to modern times, so that we find Dr. A. R. Wallace, in 

 1874, still talking of naturaUsts ''who have only just freed themselves 

 from the trammels of the old ' rostral ' system.'' 



Full justice has been done by Professor Newton to the memory of 

 lUiger, whose " classification was quite new, and made a step distinctly in 

 advance of anything that had before appeared.'' His ' Prodromus,' pub- 

 lislied in 1811, received far less recognition than it deserved; for besides 

 his explanation of the technical terms of Ornithology, his classification 

 was a truly scientific one, with diagnostic characters for orders, families, 

 and genera. Illiger's work, as well as that of other famous German 

 naturalists, such as Merrem, Mtzsch, and Johannes Muller, was strangely 

 overlooked in England, principally, because our leading zoologists were 

 exercising themselves over the precious " quinary " system, while the 

 energies of men like Gould, Jardine, and others were devoted more 

 to the production of illustrated Faunal and monographic works. The 

 later adoption of Cuvier's method by George Robert Gray in the ' Genera 

 of Birds' has doubtless been the reason why his classification has 

 -' - ^'^Howed down to recent times. 



