22 DICTIONARY OF BIRDS 
former. Both kinds increase yearly, and the desponding mind may fear 
the possibility of its favourite study expiring through being smothered by 
its own literature. Without anticipating such a future disaster, and look- 
ing merely to what has gone before, itis necessary here to premise that, 
in the observations which immediately follow, treatises which have 
appeared in the publications of learned bodies or in other scientific 
periodicals must, except they be of prime importance, be hereinafter 
passed unnoticed; but their omission will be the less felt because the 
more recent of those of a “faunal” character are generally mentioned in 
the text (GEOGRAPHICAL DisTRIBUTION) under the different countries with 
which they deal, while reference to the older of these treatises is usually 
given by the writers of the newer. Still it seems advisable here to 
furnish some connected account of the progress made in the ornitho- 
logical knowledge of those countries in which the readers of the present 
volume may be supposed to take the most lively interest—namely, 
the British Islands and those parts of the European continent which lie 
nearest to them or are most commonly sought by travellers, the 
Dominion of Canada and the United States of America, the British West 
Indies, South Africa, India, together with Australia and New Zealand. 
The more important Monographs, again, will usually be found cited in 
the series of special articles contained in this work, though, as will be 
immediately perceived, there are some so-styled Monographs, which by 
reason of the changed views of classification that at present obtain, have 
lost their restricted character, and for all practical purposes have now to 
be regarded as general works. 
; It will perhaps be most convenient to begin by mentioning some of 
these last, and in particular a number of them which appeared at Paris 
early in this century. First in order of them is the Histoire Naturelle 
d’une partie @ Oiseaux nouveaux et rares de VAmérique et des Indes, a folio 
volume? published in 1801 by Le Vaillant. This is devoted to the 
very distinct and not nearly-allied groups of Hornbills and of Birds 
which for want of a better name we call “Chatterers,” and is illus- 
trated, like those works of which a notice immediately follows, by 
coloured plates, done in what was then considered to be the highest style 
of art and by the best draughtsmen procurable. The first volume of a 
Histoire Naturelle des Perroquets, a companion work by the same author, 
appeared in the same year, and is truly a Monograph, since the Parrots 
constitute a Family of Birds so naturally severed from all others, that 
there has rarely been anything else confounded with them. The second 
volume came out in 1805, and a third was issued in 1837-38 long after 
the death of its predecessor’s author, by Bourjot St.-Hilaire. Between 
1803 and 1806 Le Vaillant also published in just the same style two 
volumes with the title of Histoire Naturelle des Oiseau de Paradis et des 
Rolliers, swivie de celle des Toucans et des Barbus, an assemblage of forms, 
which, miscellaneous as it is, was surpassed in incongruity by a fourth 
work on the same scale, the Histoire Naturelle des Promerops et des 
Guépiers, des Couroucous et des Touracos, for herein are found Jays, Wax- 
Viniyaramiasls ae : 
There is also an issue of this, as of the same author’s other works, on large 
quarto paper, 
