SOME EARLY BRITISH ORNITHOLOGISTS. 397 



In 1833, with a view to re-arranging the catalogue of 

 his museum, he paid a series of visits to some of the more 

 notable collections in this country, including the museums 

 of Glasgow, Liverpool, Dublin, Bristol and London. 

 In 1834 Macgillivray commenced to give lectures on 

 natural history, and in 1835 he finished the new catalogue. 

 In 1841 his connection with the museum came to an end, 

 he having been appointed to the professorship of " Civil 

 and Natural History " in Marischal College, Aberdeen. 

 During the ten years he was at Edinburgh, Macgillivray 

 in addition to his other work, pubhshed in 1836 " Descrip- 

 tions of the Rapacious Birds of Great Britain" (1 vol., 

 8vo), the first volume of the first edition of " A Manual 

 of British Ornithology " (2 vols., 8vo, London, 1840-1842 : 

 the second edition appeared in 1846), and the first three 

 volumes of his " Great Work," as he rightly termed it, 

 " A History of British Birds, Indigenous and Migratory." 

 Besides the above he contributed a " History of British 

 Quadrupeds " to Jardine's " Naturalist's Library " (40 

 vols., 1838-1843; 2nd edition, 1844-1855), and compiled the 

 scientific part of Audubon's " Ornithological Biographies." 

 There is no need to deal at any length with Macgillivray's 

 "Great Work " here, his object in writing it was "to lay 

 before the public, descriptions of the birds of Great Britain, 

 more extended and if possible more correct than any 

 previously offered," and this he most ably succeeded in 

 doing, but the illustrations, the anatomical plates 

 excepted, can hardly be called worthy of the text. Mac- 

 gillivray occupied his chair at Marischal College for eleven 

 years, but in 1850-1851 he was attacked by a serious illness, 

 the result it is said of a pedestrian excursion undertaken 

 in the Upper Valley of the Dee, to study that locality for 

 his last written and posthumously printed book, " The 

 Natural History of Deeside and Braemar " (1 vol., 8vo, 

 1855). In the autumn of 1851 he removed to the milder 

 climate of Torquay, and while still at that place he in 

 March, 1852, published the fourth volume of his "Great 

 Work." The fifth appeared in July after his return to 



