Goulds Birds of Australia . 
139 
Art. VII. The Birds of Australia , by John Gould 9 
F.L.S. $*c. Reviewed. 
In the year 1838 Charles Lucian Bonaparte, Prince of 
Musignano, mentions, in his Comparative List of the 
Birds of Europe and America , that “ Mr. Gould’s 
work on the Birds of Europe is the most beautiful 
work on Ornithology that has ever appeared in this 
(England) or any other country.” And such it un¬ 
doubtedly was at the time the Prince was writing ; but 
the work of which we are now going to speak, and of 
which two parts have already appeared, is likely, if we 
may judge of the whole by this sample, to prove as 
superior to the Birds of Europe , as that work was to the 
Century of Himalayan Birds of the same author. The 
Birds of Australia is, in fact, a princely work, and in no 
other country but our father-land could such an ouvrage 
de luxe be brought out without the patronage and sup¬ 
port of the Government; and we have only to look at 
the continental works on Ornithology to see how im¬ 
mensely inferioi the best of them are to those of Lear, 
Swainson, and Gould. Temminck’s plates are certainly 
beautifully coloured, and the subjects selected by Le 
Vaillant are some of the most gorgeous in nature; but 
they are all evidently portraits taken from the stuffed 
specimens in museums : whereas those of Swainson and 
Gould bear evidence of having been taken from those 
living beings the most graceful of all God’s creatures, 
each species of which possesses a movement peculiar to 
itself, sufficient to distinguish it from all its congeners. 
Australia may well be proud that, though the last of 
the great geographical divisions discovered, she will be 
the second to have her feathered race illustrated; for, with 
the exception of Europe, she will stand alone. True 
Audubon has published his magnificent Birds of America; 
