416 
A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF 
[morris 
most successful (thousands of pounds having been made out 
of successive editions), yet it has never occupied any very 
important position among the histories of British birds. 
Morris was too voluminous to be accurate, and too didactic 
to be scientific. He accepted records and statements without 
discrimination, and consequently his work abounds with 
errors and mistakes. Yet as a book for the amateur ornitho- 
logist it has charmed and delighted for more than half a 
century, and it had for many years the great merit of being 
almost the only work at a moderate price to give a fairly 
accurate and coloured figure of every species. Taxidermists, 
we may say, have for half a century set their specimens by 
these plates, and local observers all over the country have 
identified their finds and observations by them, so that 
Morris has a name and a place in British ornithological history 
despite the observations we have made above. The first 
edition of this, and of others of his works, were printed by 
Fawcett of Driffield and published by Groombridge & Sons 
of London, the plates being printed from wood-blocks en- 
graved by Fawcett himself, and coloured by hand. For the 
History of Birds not a few of the original drawings were made 
by Morris’s friend, the Rev. Richard Alington, Rector of 
Swinhope, Lincolnshire, while the majority of those for the 
Eggs were executed by W. R. Fisher (q.v.). 
Part I. of the Birds appeared about June 1, 1850, the 
work being issued in shilling numbers. The size of the 
letterpress page in the first edition was smaller than that for 
succeeding editions, which were stereotyped, although the 
plates remained the same all through, the colouring, however, 
being superior in the first edition, which had Morris and 
Fawcett’s personal supervision. 
1834. A Guide | to an | Arrangement of British Birds ; | being | A Cata- 
logue | of all the species hitherto discovered | in Great Britain 
and Ireland : | and | intended to be used for labelling cabinets 
or | collections of the same. | By | The Reverend Francis Orpen 
Morris, B. A. | of | Worcester College, Oxford. | — | London [etc.]. 
| Price Is. 6d. | 1834. 
Collation — 1 vol. 8vo, pp. 20, printed one side of the paper only. 
