INTRODUCTION 45 
graphers of this kind, but on a more extended scale, when brought together, 
that the valuable results follow which inform us as to GroGRAPHICAL 
DistRisurion. Important as they are, they do not of themselves con- 
stitute Ornithology as a science; and an enquiry, no less wide and far 
more recondite, still remains—that having for its object the discovery of 
the natural groups of Birds, and the mutual relations of those groups, 
which has always been of the deepest interest, and to it we must now recur. 
But nearly all the authors above named, it will have been seen, trod 
the same ancient paths, and in the works of scarcely one of them had 
any new spark of intelligence been struck out to enlighten the gloom 
which surrounded the investigator. It is now for us to trace the rise of 
the present more advanced school of ornithologists whose labours, pre- 
liminary as we must still regard them to be, yet give signs of far greater 
promise. It would probably be unsafe to place its origin further back 
than a few scattered hints contained in the ‘ Pterographische Fragmente’ 
of Christian Ludwig Nitzsch, published in the Magazin fiir den neuesten 
Zustand der Naturkuinde (edited by Voigt) for May 1806 (xi. pp. 393-417), 
and even these might be left to pass unnoticed, were it not that we recog- 
nize in them the germ of the great work which the same admirable 
zoologist subsequently accomplished. In these “ Fragments,” apparently 
his earliest productions, we find him engaged on the subject with which 
his name will always be especially identified, the structure and arrange- 
ment of the feathers that form the proverbial characteristic of Birds. 
But, though the observations set forth in this essay were sufficiently 
novel, there is not much in them that at the time would have attracted 
attention, for perhaps no one—not even the author himself—could have 
then foreseen to what important end they would, in conjunction with 
other investigations, lead future naturalists ; but they are marked by the 
close and patient determination that eminently distinguishes all the work 
of their author ; and, since it will be necessary for us to return to this 
the somewhat turgid Introduction was published ; but the two parts printed shew the 
author to have been a physiologist, anatomist and outdoor-observer far beyond most 
men of his time, beside being of a philosophical turn, well acquainted with literature, 
and an agreeable writer. At a long interval follow Dillwyn’s Fauna and Flora of 
Swansea (1848) ; Knox’s Ornithological Rambles in Sussex (1849); Mr. Harting’s 
Birds of Middlesex (1866) ; Stevenson’s Birds of Norfolk (3 vols. 1866-90, completed 
by Mr. Southwell) ; Cecil Smith’s Birds of Somerset (1869) and of Guernsey (1879) ; 
Mr. Cordeaux’s Birds of the Humber District (1872) ; Hancock’s Birds of Northumber- 
land and Durham (1874); The Birds of Nottinghamshire by Messrs. Sterland and 
Whitaker (1879) ; Rodd’s Birds of Cornwall, edited by Mr. Harting (1880); the 
Vertebrate Fauna of Yorkshire (1881), in which the Birds are by Mr. W. E. Clarke ; 
Churchill Babington’s Birds of Suffolk (1884-6); and Mr. A. C. Smith’s Birds of 
Wiltshire (1887). Since the publication of Mr. Christy’s Catalogue a few more have 
to be briefly mentioned, and first his own volume on the Birds of Hssex (1890), while 
those of Sussex were treated in 1891 by Mr. Borrer ; Worcestershire (1891) by Mr. 
Willis Bund; Devonshire (1891) by Mr. Pidsley and (1892) by Messrs. D’Urban and 
Mathew (Suppl. and ed. 2, 1895); Lakeland (1892) by Mr. H. A. Macpherson ; 
Lancashire (ed. 2, 1893) by Mr. F. S. Mitchell ; Zondon (1893) by Mr. Swann ; 
Derbyshire (1893) by Mr. Whitlock, and finally Northamptonshire (2 vols. 1895) by 
Lord Lilford. The papers in journals are countless, but almost all up to the time of 
compilation are contained in the excellent List of Kaunal Publications relating to 
British Birds, published in 1880 by Dr. Coues (Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus. ii. pp. 
359-482), 
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