XXvVi 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, Passerine, 
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 Lacépéde, Meyer, Wolf, Temminck, and Savigny, 
aud have referred to each of them all the species of which I could obtain 
a very positive knowledge. This fatiguing work will prove of vaiue 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 1798 in 
my “ Tableau Elémentaire *.” 
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 obtain 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, indifferent 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 Lacépéde, 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. 
* T only mention this, because an amiable naturalist, M. Vieillot, in a recent work, 
has attributed to himself the union of the Pice with the Passeres. 1 had published 
it in 1798, exactly as I had made my other arrangements, so as to render them pub- 
lic, in the Museum, since 1811 and 1812. 
