Peete paris th del take A Nba oy 
1876.] Progress of Ornithology in the United States. 589 
by Jardine’s edition (London and Edinburgh, 1832), in three 
octavo volumes, of the same authors. This last was reissued in 
this country in 1840, in one volume, with the addition of a Syn- 
opsis of the Birds of North America, by Dr. T. M. Brewer. 
Of this there were subsequently several reprints from the same 
stereotyped plates. 
In 1827, John James Audubon began the publication of his 
celebrated work on North American birds, which was not com- 
pleted till 1839. The whole work forms five octavo volumes of 
text, with an elephant folio atlas in four volumes of four hundred 
and thirty-five plates. The text was published in Edinburgh, 
with the title of Ornithological Biography; the plates in Lon- 
don,as Birds of America. This magnificent work remains as 
yet unequaled in respect to its illustrations, which are unrivaled 
in point of accuracy and life-like character, the birds being all 
represented of the size of life. In his animated descriptions 
there is at times a tendency to exaggeration and redundancy of 
personal incidents. The species are arranged according to the 
convenience of the author, a systematic arrangement being in 
such a work obviously impracticable. In 1839, however, on 
lts completion, the author published his Synopsis of the Birds 
of North America. In this work the nomenclature is revised 
and greatly changed, principally through the adoption of many 
of the then recently introduced generic designations. This Syn- 
opsis (one volume, octavo, Edinburgh) was a methodical catalogue 
of all the species at that time known to inhabit North America 
north of Mexico, and was intended to serve as a systematic index 
to his Ornithological Biography, and Birds of America. The 
work, however, is much more than this, giving, as it does, the 
characters of the families, genera, and species, the range of each 
Species, and numerous bibliographical references. It includes also 
a few species not given in his larger works. 
Subsequently Audubon republished his Ornithological Biogra- 
Phy, and Birds of America in a single work, under the title 
of Birds of America. This is simply a reissue of the text of 
the former, with the species systematically arranged under the 
names employed in the Synopsis, and the addition of the plates 
of the large folio work, reduced by the camera lucida. This 
Work was published at Philadelphia (1840 to 1844), in seven 
A"Perial octavo volumes. It has also been since republished in 
aw York, with chromo-lithographic illustrations of a character 
Inferior to those of the original work. The appendix to the 
