2814 The Zoologist — November, 1871. 



looked at the pictures; I cared nothing for the descriptions." 

 And it is the pictures that will endure, and will be reproduced and 

 pirated perhaps, as long as the world lasts. I, too, only look at 

 the pictures : I care nothing for the descriptions. I love the 

 pictures as the apple of my eye : they are almost destined to 

 immortality. Haply when Lord Macaulay's Maori shall seat 

 himself on the relics of London Bridge, like Marius on the ruins of 

 Carthage, and, contemplating the crumbling dome of St. Paul's, 

 shall speculate on the probable faith of those who once worshipped 

 within that glorious fane, the handywork of Bewick, like that of 

 Apelles, will probably retain a traditionary reputation. 



Twenty years elapsed, and in 1833 we had two volumes of 

 descriptions written to accompany his magnificent figures, by 

 Prideaux John Selby, and these are the best descriptions syste- 

 matically arranged of any we yet possess; but very few could 

 afford to indulge in the luxury of the plates, and although the 

 letter-press was sold separately, yet in the divorced form it seems 

 to have met with but few purchasers, and to the large majority of 

 our collectors it remains to this day a book only known by the 

 quotations in later authors ; yet it is a work of the greatest value : 

 it has all the merit of Montagu's careful descriptions superadded 

 to the author's most accurate appreciation of character. 



Four years later Mr. Yarrell entered the field, and came not 

 alone ; Professor Macgillivray made his appearance as an orni- 

 thological author simultaneously, and for a quarter of a century 

 these two kept their names before our little ornithological public: 

 the dates of the two bear a singular but not complete cor- 

 respondence. Mr. Yarrell began his first edition on the 1st of 

 July, 1837, and finished it in May, 1843. Macgillivray concluded 

 his first volume in 1837, his second in 1839, and his third in 1840. 

 A second edition of Yarrell appeared to be called for, and it 

 appeared in 1845. In 1852 Professor Macgillivray completed and 

 published his fourth and fifth volumes; and a third edition of 

 Yarrell appeared in 1856. Considering that he occupied a chair 

 of Natural History, it is wonderful how small an amount of 

 research, of book-knowledge, is exhibited by Macgillivray : I do 

 not say that he did not read Yarrell, and Selby, for the matter 

 of that, since he has mentioned Yarrell in several places, and 

 quotes three or four pages at a time from Selby, as in the instance 

 of the fulmar; but he leaves the vast regions of continental 



