XXVI PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 



Naturalists, I hope, will approve of the numerous subgenera I have 

 deemed it necessary to establish among the Birds of Prey, Passerinse, 

 and Shore-Birds; they appear to me to have thrown the greatest light 

 on genera hitherto involved in much confusion. I have also marked, as 

 exactly as I could, the correspondence of these subdivisions with the 

 genera of MM. de Lacepede, Meyer, Wolf, Temminck, and Savigny, 

 and have referred to each of them all the species of which I could obtain 

 a very positive knowledge. This fatiguing work will prove of value to 

 those who may hereafter attempt a true history of Birds. The splendid 

 works on Ornithology published within a few years, those chiefly of M. 

 Le Vaillant, which are filled with so many interesting observations, and 

 those of M. Vieillot, have been of much assistance to me in designating 

 with precision the species they represent. 



The general division of this class remains as I published it in 1708 in 

 my " Tableau Elementaire *." 



The general division of Reptiles, by my friend M. Brongniart, I have 

 thought proper to preserve, but I have prosecuted very extensive and 

 laborious anatomical investigations to obtam my ulterior subdivisions. 

 M. Oppel, as I have already stated, has partly taken advantage of these 

 preparatory labours; and whenever my genera finally agreed with his, I 

 have noticed the fact. The work of Daudin, indiiFerent as it is, has 

 been useful to me for indications of details; but the particular divisions I 

 have made in the genera Monitor and Gecko, are the product of my own 

 observations on a great number of Reptiles recently brought to the 

 Museum by Messrs. Peron and Geoffroy. 



My labours with regard to the Fishes will probably be found to exceed 

 those I have bestowed on the other vertebrated animals. Since the pub- 

 lication of the celebrated work of M. de Lacepede, the accession to our 

 Museum of a great number of fishes has enabled me to add several sub- 

 divisions to those of that learned naturalist, to form different combinations 

 of several species, and to multiply anatomical observations. I have also 

 had better means of verifying the species of Commerson and of some 

 other travellers, and on this point I owe much to a review of the drawings 

 of Commerson and of the dried fishes he brought with him, by M. 

 Dumeril, which have been but very lately recovered: resources to which 

 I added those presented to me in the fishes brought by Peron from the 

 Indian Ocean and Archipelago ; those which I collected in the Mediter- 

 ranean, and the collections made on the coast of Coromandel by the late 



my first volume was printed in the beginning of 1816. Four volumes are not printed 

 as quickly as a pamphlet of a few pages. I say no more. 



* I only mention tliis, because an amiable naturalist, M. ^'^ieillot, in a recent work, 

 has attributed to himself the union of the Piote with the I'asseres. 1 had published 

 it in 1798, exactly as I liad made my other arrangements, so as to render them pub- 

 lic, ill the Museum, since 1811 and 1812. 



