T4 DICTIONARY OF (BIRDS 
Linnzeus’s work, but left the classification, at least of the Birds, as it was 
—a few new genera excepted.t 
During all this time little had been done in studying the internal 
structure of Birds since the works of Coiter already mentioned ;? but the 
foundations of the science of Embryology had been laid by the investiga- 
tions into the development of the chick by the great Harvey. Between 
1666 and 1669 Perrault edited at Paris eight accounts of the dissection 
by Du Verney of as many species of Birds, which, translated into English, 
were published by the Royal Society in 1702, under the title of The 
Natural History of Animals. After the death of the two anatomists just 
named, another series of similar descriptions of eight other species was 
found among theif papers, and the whole were published in the Mémoztres 
of the French Academy of Sciences in 1733 and 1734. But in 1681 
Gerard Blasius had brought out at Amsterdam an Anatome Animalium, 
containing the results of all the dissections of animals that he could find ; 
and the second part of this book, treating of Volatclia, makes a respectable 
show of ‘more than 120 closely-printed quarto pages, though nearly two- 
thirds is devoted to a treatise De Ovo et Pullo, containing among other 
things a reprint of Harvey’s researches, and the scientific rank of the 
whole book may be inferred from Bats being still classed with Birds. In 
1720 Valentini published, at Frankfort-on-the-Main, his Amphitheatrum 
Zootomicum, in which again most of the existing accounts of the anatomy 
of Birds were reprinted. But these and many other contributions,? made 
until nearly the close of the eighteenth century, though highly meritorious, 
were unconnected as a whole, and it is plain that no conception of what 
it was in the power of Comparative Anatomy to set forth had occurred to 
the most diligent dissectors. This privilege was reserved for Georges 
Cuvier, who in 1798 published at Paris his Tableau élémentatre de Vhistoire 
naturelle des Animawx, and thus laid the foundation of a thorough and 
hitherto unknown mode of appreciating the value of the various groups 
of the Animal Kingdom. Yet his first attempt was a mere sketch.* 
Though he made a perceptible advance on the classification of Linnzus, 
at that time predominant, it is now easy to see in how many ways—want 
of sufficient material being no doubt one of the chief—Cuvier failed to 
produce a really natural arrangement. His principles, however, are those 
which must still guide taxonomers, notwithstanding that they have in so 
great a degree overthrown the entire scheme which he propounded. 
Cuvier’s arrangement of the Class Aves is now seen to be not very much 
1 Daudin’s unfinished Zraité élémentaire et complet d’ Ornithologie appeared at 
Paris in 1800, and therefore is the last of these general works published in the 
eighteenth century. 
? A succinct notice of the older works on Ornithotomy is given by Prof. Selenka in 
the introduction to that portion of Bronn’s Klassen und Ordnungen des Thierreichs 
relating to Birds (pp. 1-9) published in 1869; and Prof. Carus’s Geschichte der 
Zoologie, published in 1872, may also be usefully consulted for further information 
on this and other heads. 3 
* The treatises of the two Bartholinis and Borrichius published at Copenhagen 
deserve mention if only to record the activity of Danish anatomists in those days. 
* It had no effect on Lacépéde, who in the following year added a Tableau 
Méthodique containing a classification of Birds to his Discours d’ Ouverture (Mém. de 
U Institut, iii. pp. 454-468, 508-519). 
