PRESIDEN'I’S ADDRESS—-SECTION D. 95 
and who in all good faith redescribed as new some of his im- 
perfectly described species. At a later period the drawings 
again came to light, and were investigated by Dr. J. E. Gray, 
G. R. Gray, H. Strickland, and John Gould (0). By the com- 
bined efforts of these four gentlemen, and with the expenditure 
of much trouble, the synonymy was at last cleared up, and 
matters were put straight in time to permit Gould to enter upon 
his great work on Australian birds without making confusion 
worse confounded. At this very early stage we are brought 
face to face with another characteristic of Australian faunistic 
work. At the very beginning this was the study of the fauna. 
At an early stage it began, and in some cases continued to 
be largely the study of a complicated nomenclature and its 
accompaniments, and incidentally that of some section of the 
fauna. 
Indirectly the work of Latham and Shaw was unfortunate, 
because time was lost and the advance of knowledge was re- 
tarded. Later on the inevitable revolt came, to some extent in 
the shape of the Quinarianism of W. Sharpe Macleay and his 
school. Hugh Strickland, who was by no means a prejudiced 
observer, thus sums up the state of affairs in the first quarter of 
the present century (p):—‘“ The backward condition of orni- 
thology must be attributed in great measure to the pertinacity 
with which its followers during many years adhered to the 
letter instead of to the spirit of Linnzeus’s writings. In this 
country the venerable Latham, who for half a century was re- 
garded as the great oracle of ornithology, persisted so late as 
1824 in classifying his 5000 species of birds in the same number 
of genera (with very few additions) as were employed by 
Linneus for a fifth part of those species. The consequence was 
that many of the genera in Latham’s last work contain each 
several hundred species, frequently presenting the most hetero- 
geneous characters, and massed together without any, or with 
only very rude attempts at further subdivision. Shaw’s 
‘General Zoology’ was, in a great measure, a servile copy of 
Latham’s ‘ Ornithology,’ and these two works formed for many 
years almost the only text-books on the subject. On the Con- 
tinent meanwhile, those who were not disciples of Linnzeus trans- 
ferred their allegiance to Buffon, and often exceeded that author 
in their contempt for systematic arrangement and uniform 
nomenclature.” 
Brief mention may be made of Zorn’s early connection with 
Australian conchology. It is said that it was Solander’s inten- 
tion and aim to develop and remodel the conchological portion of 
the “ Systema Nature,” just as Fabricius attempted to do it for 
the entomological section. This, however, was not carried out. 
(0) Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., xi., 1843, pp. 189, 333. 
(p) Report Brit. Assoc., xiii., 1844, p. 170 ; Collected Works, Part IT., p. 248. 
