INTRODUCTION is 
William Turner, a Northumbrian, while residing abroad to avoid persecu- 
tion at home, printed at Cologne in 1544 the first commentary on the 
Birds mentioned by Aristotle and Pliny conceived in anything like the 
spirit that moves modern naturalists! In the same year and from the 
same press was issued a Dialogus de Avibus by Gybertus Longolius, and 
in 1570 Caius brought out in London his treatise De rariorwm animalium 
atque stirprum historia. In this last work, small though it be, ornithology 
has a good share ; and all three may still be consulted with interest and 
advantage by its votaries.2 Meanwhile the study received a great impulse 
from the appearance, at Zurich in 1555, of the third book of the illustrious 
Conrad Gesner’s Historia Animalium “qviest de Auium natura,” and at 
Paris in the same year of Pierre Belon’s (Bellonius) Histoire de la nature 
des Oyseaux. Gesner brought anamount of erudition, hitherto unequalled, 
to bear upon his subject ; and, making due allowance for the time in 
which he wrote, his judgment must in most respects be deemed excellent. 
In his work, however, there is little that can be called systematic treat- 
ment. Like nearly all his predecessors since Adlian, he adopted an 
alphabetical arrangement,® though this was not too pedantically preserved, 
and did not hinder him from placing together the kinds of Birds which he 
supposed (and generally supposed rightly) to have the most resemblance 
to that one whose name, being best known, was chosen for the headpiece 
(as it were) of his particular theme, thus recognizing to some extent the 
principle of classification. Belon, with perhaps less book-learning than 
his contemporary, was evidently no mean scholar, and undoubtedly had 
more practical knowledge of Birds—their internal as well as external 
structure. Hence his work contains a far greater amount of original 
matter; and his personal observations made in many countries, from 
England to Egypt, enabled him to avoid most of the puerilities which 
disfigure other works of his own or of a preceding age. Leside this, Belon 
disposed the Birds known to him according to a definite system, which 
(rude as we now know it to be) formed a foundation on which several of 
his successors were content to build, and even to this day traces of its 
influence may still be discerned in the arrangement followed by writers 
who have faintly appreciated the principles on which modern taxonomers 
rest the outline of their schemes. Both his work and that of Gesner were 
capp. xxiii.-lxxx.) is a good deal about birds which is not altogether nonsense. This 
work was edited for the Rolls Series, in 1863, by the same Mr. Wright. 
1 This was reprinted at Cambridge in 1823 by the late Dr. George Thackeray. 
2 The Seventh of Wotton’s De differentiis animalium Libri Decem,, published at 
Paris in 1552, treats of Birds; but his work is merely a compilation from Aristotle 
and Pliny, with references to other classical writers who have more or less incidentally 
mentioned Birds and other animals. The author in his preface states—‘ Veterum 
scriptorum sententias in unum quasi cumulum coaceruaui, de meo nihil addidi.” 
Nevertheless he makes some attempt at a systematic arrangement of Birds, which, 
according to his lights, is far from despicable. 
® Even at the present day it may be shrewdly suspected that not a few orni- 
thologists would gladly follow Gesner’s plan in their despair of seeing, in their own 
time, a classification which would really deserve the epithet scientific. 
4 For instance, under the title of “ Accipiter ” we have to look, not only for the 
Sparrow-Hawk and Gos-Hawk, but for many other birds of the Family (as we now 
call it) removed comparatively far from those species by modern ornithologists. 
