INTRODUCTION 23 
wings, the Cock-of-the-Rock (Rupicola) and what not besides. The 
plates in this last are by Barraband, for many years regarded as the 
perfection of ornithological artists, and indeed the figures, when they 
happen to have been drawn from the life, are not bad; but his skill was 
quite unable to vivify the preserved specimens contained in Museums, 
and when he had only these as subjects he simply copied the distortions 
of the “bird-stuffer.” The following year, 1808, being aided by Tem- 
minck of Amsterdam, of whose son we shall presently hear more, Le 
Vaillant brought out the sixth volume of his Oiseaux d’ Afrique, already 
mentioned. Four more volumes of this work were promised ; but the 
means of executing them were denied to him, and, though he lived until 
1824, his publications ceased. 
A similar series of works was projected and begun about the same 
time as that of Le Vaillant by Audebert and Vieillot, though the former, 
who was by profession a painter and illustrated the work, had died more 
than a year before the appearance of the two volumes, bearing date 
1802, and entitled Oiseaux dorés ow a reflets métalliques, the effect of the 
plates in which he sought to heighten by the use of gilding. ‘The first 
volume contains the “Colibris, Oiseaux-mouches, Jacamars et Pro- 
merops,” the second the “Grimpereaux” and “Oiseaux de Paradis ”— 
associations which set all the laws of systematic method at defiance. 
His colleague, Vieillot, brought out in 1805 a Histoire Naturelle des plus 
beaua Chanteurs de la Zone Torride with figures by Langlois of tropical 
Fenches, Grosbeaks, Buntings and other hard-billed Birds; and in 1807 
two volumes of a Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux de V Amérique Septen- 
trionale, without, however, paying much attention to the limits commonly 
assigned by geographers to that part of the world. In 1805 Anselme 
Desmarest published a Histovre Naturelle des Tangaras, des Manakins et 
des Todiers, which, though belonging to the same category as all the 
former, differs from them in its more scientific treatment of the subjects 
to which it refers ; and, in 1808, Temminck, whose father’s aid to Le 
Vaillant has already been noticed, brought out at Paris a Histoire Naturelle 
des Pigeons, illustrated by Madame Knip, who had drawn the plates for 
Desmarest’s volume.t 
Since we have begun by considering these large illustrated works in 
which the text is made subservient to the coloured plates, it may be 
convenient to continue our notice of such others of similar character as 
it may be expedient to mention here, though thereby we shall be led 
somewhat far afield. Most of them are but luxuries, and there is some 
degree of truth in the remark of Andreas Wagner in his Report on the 
Progress of Zoology for 1843, drawn up for the Ray Society (p. 60), that 
they “are not adapted for the extension and promotion of science, but 
must inevitably, on account of their unnecessary costliness, constantly 
tend to reduce the number of naturalists who are able to avail them- 
selves of them, and they thus enrich ornithology only to its ultimate 
1 Temminck subsequently reproduced, with many additions, the text of this 
volume in his Histoire Naturelle des Pigeons et des Gallinacées, published at Am- 
sterdam in 1813-15, in 3 vols. 8vo. Between 1838 and 1848 Florent-Provost brought 
out at Paris a further set of illustrations of Pigeons by Mdme. Knip. 
