INTRODUCTION I3 
Zoologice ; Jacquin’s Beytracge zur Geschichte der Voegel at Vienna in 1784, 
and in 1790 at the same place the larger work of Spalowsky with nearly 
the same title; Sparrman’s Musewm Carlsonianum at Stockholm from 
1786 to 1789; and in 1794 Hayes’s Portraits of rare and curious Birds 
from the menagery of Child the banker at Osterley near London. The 
same draughtsman (who had in 1775 produced a bad History of British 
Birds) in 1822 began another series of Wigures of rare and curious 
Birds} 
The practice of Brisson, Buffon, Latham and others of not giving 
names after the Linnzean fashion to the species they described gave great 
encouragement to compilation, and led to what has proved to be of some 
inconvenience to modern ornithologists. In 1773 Philip Ludvig Statius 
Miller brought out at Nuremberg a German translation of the Systema 
Nature, completing it in 1776 by a Supplement containing a list of 
animals thus described, which had hitherto been technically anonymous, 
with diagnoses and names on the Linnean model. In 1783 Boddaert 
printed at Utrecht a Table des Planches Enluminéz,? in which he attempted 
to refer every species of Bird figured in that extensive series to its proper 
Linnean genus, and to assign it a scientific name if it did not already 
possess one. In like manner in 1786, Scopoli—already the author of a 
little book published at Leipzig in 1769 under the title of Annus I. 
Historico-naturalis, in which are described many Birds, mostly from his 
own collection or the Imperial vivarium at Vienna—was at the pains to 
print at Pavia in his miscellaneous Delicie Flore et Faune Insubrice a 
Specimen Zoologicum® containing diagnoses, duly named, of the Birds 
discovered and described by Sonnerat in his Voyage aux Indes orientales 
and Voyage a la Nouvelle Guinée, severally published at Paris in 1772 
and 1776. But the most striking example of compilation was that 
exhibited by J. F. Gmelin, who in 1788 commenced what he called the 
Thirteenth Edition of the celebrated Systema Nature, which obtained so 
wide a circulation that, in the comparative rarity of the original, the 
additions of this editor have been very frequently quoted, even by expert 
naturalists, as though they were the work of the author himself. Gmelin 
availed himself of every publication he could, but he perhaps found his 
richest booty in the labours of Latham, neatly condensing his English 
descriptions into Latin diagnoses, and bestowing on them binomial names. 
Hence it is that Gmelin appears as the authority for so much of the 
nomenclature now in use. He took many liberties with the details of 
1 The Naturalist’s Miscellany or Vivarium Naturale, in English and Latin, of 
Shaw and Nodder, the former being the author, the latter the draughtsman and 
engraver, was begun in 1789 and carried on till Shaw’s death, forming twenty-four 
volumes. It contains figures of more than 280 Birds, but very poorly executed. In 
1814 a sequel, The Zoological Miscellany, was begun by Leach, Nodder continuing to 
do the plates. This was completed in 1817, and forms three volumes with 149 plates, 
27 of which represent Birds. 
2 Of this work only fifty copies were printed, and it is one of the rarest known to 
the ornithologist. Only two copies are believed to exist in England, one in the 
British Museum, the other in private hands. It was reprinted in 1874 by Mr. 
Tegetmeier. 
% This was reprinted in 1882 by the Willughby Society. 
G 
