266 BRITISH BIRDS. 



popularity partly from their very brief and formal 

 descriptions, and partly from the lack of standard works 

 available both at that time, and for many years to come. 

 The charm of Gilbert White had yet to be discovered, 

 and though the woodcuts of Thomas Bewick proved a 

 great incentive to the study of ornithology, it was not 

 until the genius of George Montagu produced in 1802 

 the " Ornithological Dictionary " that the work which 

 had been begun by Willughby and Ray, was properly 

 continued. The very productiveness of Pennant's work 

 no doubt also detracted from its utility — as he himself 

 tells us, "I am often astonished at the multiplicity of 

 my publications, especially when I reflect on the various 

 duties it has fallen to my lot to discharge, as a father of a 

 family, landlord of a small but very numerous tenantry, 

 and a not inactive magistrate." * Towards the close of 

 Pennant's active life he was confined to his ancestral 

 seat at Downing by an accident Avhich broke the patella 

 of his knee, but he continued to work with unabated 

 energy at the revision of his "Outlines of the Globe," 

 but his health was rapidly failing, and he passed away 

 on December 16th, 1798, at the advanced age of 

 seventy-two. 



* Besides the Zoological works already mentioned, Pennant wrote 

 "Indian Zoology," 1769-179G; " Genera "of Birds," Edinburgh, 1773, 

 and London, 1781 ; " Indexes to the Ornithologie of the Comte de 

 Buff on," 1786, while the observations on natural history contained 

 in the various Tours, notably in " The Tour to Scotland," 3 vols., 

 1776, and that "in Wales," 3 vols., 1810, are of considerable interest, 

 and this principally from the fact that they were jotted down without 

 any attempt at scientific treatment. 



