6 



ORNITHOLOGY 



was introduced. It is certain that the first four volumes 

 were written if not printed before that "method was 

 promulgated, and when the fame of Linna?us as a 

 zoologist rested on little more than the very meagre sixth 

 edition of the Syatema Katurm and the first edition of his 

 Fauna Suedca. Brisson has been charged with, jealousy 

 of if not hostility to the great Swede, and it is true that in 

 the preface to his Omithologie he complains of the insuffici- 

 ency of the Linneean characters, but, when one considers 

 how much better acquainted with Birds the Frenchman 

 was, such criticism must be allowed to be pardonable if 

 not wholly just. Busson's work was in French, with a 

 parallel translation in Latin, which last was reprinted 

 separately at Leyden two years afterwards. 

 Salerne. In 1767 there was issued at Paris a book entitled 

 L'/iinfiiiiY nutitrtlli i-r/ai/rie ilins une de ses parties princi- 

 pales, V Omithologie. This was the work of Salerne, 

 published after his death, and is often spoken of as being 

 a mere translation of Kay's Synopsis, but is thereby very 

 inadequately described; for, though it is confessedly founded 

 on that little book, a vast amount of fresh matter, and 

 mostly of good quality, is added. 

 D'Auben- The success of Edwards's very respectable work seems 

 ton - to have provoked competition, and in 1765, at the instiga- 



tion of Buffon, the younger D'Atjbenton began the pub- 

 lication known as the Planches Enlumineez d'histoire 

 nnturelle, which appearing in forty-two parts was not com- 

 pleted till 1780, when the plates 1 it contained reached the 

 number of 1008 — all coloured, as its title intimates, and 

 nearly all representing Birds. This enormous work was 

 subsidized by the French Government ; and, though the 

 figures are utterly devoid of artistic merit, they display the 

 species they are intended to depict with sufficient approach 

 to fidelity to ensure recognition in most cases without fear of 

 error, which in the absence of any text is no small praise. 2 

 Buffon But Buffox was not content with merely causing to be 



m published this unparalleled set of plates. He seems to 



beillard have regarded the work just named as a necessary precursor 

 to his own labours in Ornithology. His Histoire Naturelle, 

 general, it particuliere, was begun in 1749, and in 1770 

 he brought out, with the assistance of Guenau de 

 Montbeillard, 3 the first volume of that grand undertaking 

 relating to Birds, which, for the first time since the days 

 of Aristotle, became the theme of one who possessed real 

 literary capacity. It is not too much to say that Buffon's 

 florid fancy revelled in such a subject as was now that on 

 which he exercised his brilliant pen ; but it would be unjust 

 to examine too closely what to many of his contemporaries 

 seemed sound philosophical reasoning under the light that 

 has since burst upon us. Strictly orthodox though he pro- 

 fessed to be, there were those, both among his own country- 

 men and foreigners, who could not read his speculative 

 indictments of the workings of Nature without a shudder; 

 and it is easy for any one in these days to frame a reply, 

 pointed with ridicule, to such a chapter as he wrote on the 

 wretched fate of the Woodpecker. In the nine volumes 

 devoted to the Histoire Kutitnlh des Oisniu.r there are 

 passages which will for ever live in the memory of those 



1 They were drawn and engraved by Martinet, who himself began 

 in 1787 a Histoire des Oiseauz with small coloured plates which have 

 some merit, but the text is worthless. The work seems not to have 

 been finished and is rare. For the opportunity of seeing a copy the 

 writer is indebted to Mr Gurney. 



- Between 1767 and 1776 there appeared at Florence a Storia 

 Nntnralc detjli Uccclli, in five folio volumes, containing a number of 

 ill-drawn and ill-coloured figures from the collection of Giovanni 

 Gerini, an anient collector who died in 1751, and therefore must be 

 acquitted of any shave in the work, which, though sometimes attributed 

 to him, is {hat of certain learned men who did ml happen to be ornitho- 

 logists (</. Savi, Ornitologia Toscana, i. Introduzione, p. v). 



3 He retired on the completion of the sixth volume, and thereupon 

 Buffon associated Bexon with himself. 



that carefully read them, however much occasional expres- 

 sions, or even the general tone of the author, may grate 

 upon their feelings. He too was the first man who formed 

 any theory that may be called reasonable of the Geographical 

 Distribution of Animals, though this theory was scarcely 

 touched in the ornithological portion of his work, and has 

 since proved to be not in accordance with facts. He pro- 

 claimed the variability of species in opposition to the views 

 of Linnaeus as to their fixity, and moreover supposed that 

 this variability arose in part by degradation. 4 Taking his 

 labours as a whole, there cannot be a doubt that he enor- 

 mously enlarged the purview of naturalists, and, even if 

 limited to Birds, that, on the completion of his work upon 

 them in 1783, Ornithology stood in a very different position 

 from that which it had before occupied. Because he 

 opposed the system of Linnaeus he has been said to be 

 opposed to systems in general ; but that is scarcely correct, 

 for he had a system of his own ; and, as we now see it, it 

 appears neither much better nor much worse than the 

 systems which had been hitherto invented, or perhaps than 

 any which was for many years to come propounded. It is 

 certain that he despised any kind of scientific phraseology 

 — a crime in the eyes of those who consider precise 

 nomenclature to be the end of science ; but those who deem 

 it merely a means whereby knowledge can be securely 

 stored will take a different view — and have done so. 



Great as were the services of Buffon to Ornithology in Latham, 

 one direction, those of a wholly different kind rendered by 

 our countryman John Latham must not be overlooked. 

 In 1781 he began a work the practical utility of which 

 was immediately recognized. This was his General 

 Synopsis of Birds, and, though formed generally on the 

 model of Linnaeus, greatly diverged in some respects there- 

 from. The classification was modified, chiefly on the old 

 lines of Willughby and Ray, and certainly for the better ; 

 but no scientific nomenclature was adopted, which, as the 

 author subsequently found, was a change for the worse. 

 His scope was co-extensive with that of Brisson, but Latham 

 did not possess the inborn faculty of picking out the 

 character wherein one species differs from another. His 

 opportunities of becoming acquainted with Birds were 

 hardly inferior to Brisson's, for during Latham's long life- 

 time there poured in upon him countless new discoveries 

 from all parts of the world, but especially from the newly- 

 explored shores of Australia and the islands of the Pacific 

 Ocean. The British Museum had been formed, and he 

 had access to everything it contained in addition to the 

 abundant materials afforded him by the private Museum of 

 Sir Ashton Lever. 6 Latham entered, so far as the limits 

 of his work would allow, into the history of the Birds he 

 described, and this with evident zest, whereby he differed 

 from his French predecessor ; but the number of cases in 

 which he erred as to the determination of his species must 

 be very great, and not unfrequently the same species is 

 described more than once. His Synopsis was finished in 

 1785 ; two supplements were added in 1787 and 1802, 6 

 and in 1790 he produced an abstract of the work under 

 the title of Index Ornithologicus, wherein he assigned names 

 on the Linnaean method to all the species described. Not 

 to recur again to his labours, it may be said here that 

 between 1821 and 1828 he published at Winchester, in 

 eleven volumes, an enlarged edition of his original work, 

 entitling it A General History of Birds ; but his defects as 



4 See Prof. Mivart's address to the Section of Biology, Rep. Brit. 

 Association (Sheffield Meeting), 1879, p. 356. 



6 In 1792 Shaw began the Museum Leverianum in illustration of 

 this collection, which was finally dispersed by sale, and what is known 

 to remain of it found its way to Vienna. Of the specimens in the 

 British Museum described by Latham it is to be feared that scarcely 

 any exist. They were probably very imperfectly prepared. 



6 A German translation by Bechstein subsequently appeared. 



