Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/16

 6 ORNITHOLOGY was introduced. It is certain that the first four volumes were written if not printed before that method was promulgated, and Avhen the fame of Linmeus as a zoologist rested on little more than the very meagre sixth edition of the Systema yaturw and the first edition of his Fauna Suecica. Brisson has been charged with jealousy of if not hostility to the great Swede, and it is true that in the preface to his Omithologie he complains of the insuffici ency of the Linn&an characters, but, when one considers how much better acquainted with Birds the Frenchman was, such criticism must be allowed to be pardonable if not wholly just. Busson s work was in French, with a parallel translation in Latin, which last was reprinted separately at Leyden two years afterwards. salerne. In 1767 there was issued at Paris a book entitled L kistoire naturelle edaircie dans une de ses pat-ties princi- pales, I Omithologie. This was the work of SALERNE, published after his death, and is often spoken of as being a mere translation of Ray s Synopsis, but is thereby very inadequately described, for, though it is confessedly founded on that little book, a vast amount of fresh matter, and mostly of good quality, is added. D Auben- The success of Edwards s very respectable work seems tou - to have provoked competition, and in 1765, at the instiga tion of Buffon, the younger D AUBENTON began the pub lication known as the Planches Enlumincez dhistoire naturelle, which appearing in forty-two parts was not com pleted till 1780, when the plates 1 it contained reached the number of 1008 all coloured, as its title intimates, and nearly all representing Birds. This enormous work was subsidized by the French Government ; and, though the figures are utterly devoid of artistic merit, they display the species they are intended to depict with sufficient approach to fidelity to ensure recognition in most cases without fear of error, which in the absence of any text is no small praise. 2 But BCTFOX was not content with merely causing to be published this unparalleled set of plates. He seems to have regarded the word just named as a necessary precursor to his own labours in Ornithology. His Histoire Naturelle, generale et particuliere, was begun in 1749, and in 1770 he brought out, with the assistance of GUEXAU BE MoxTBEiLLARD, 3 the first volume of that grand undertaking relating to Birds, which, for the first time since the days of Aristotle, became the theme of one who possessed real literary capacity. It is not too much to say that Buffon s florid fancy revelled in such a subject as was now that on which he exercised his brilliant pen ; but it would be unjust to examine too closely what to many of his contemporaries seemed sound philosophical reasoning under the light that has since burst upon us. Strictly orthodox though he pro fessed to be, there were those, both among his own country men and foreigners, who could not read his speculative indictments of the workings of Nature without a shudder; and it is easy for any one in these days to frame a reply, pointed Avith ridicule, to such a chapter as he wrote on the wretched fate of the Woodpecker. In the nine volumes devoted to the Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux there are passages which will for ever live in the memory of those 1 They were drawn and engraved by MARTINET, who himself began in 1787 a Histoire des Oiseaux with .small coloured plates which, have some m erit, but the text is worthless. The work seems not to have been finished and is rare. For the opportunity of seeing a copy the writer is indebted to Mr Gurney. 2 Between 1767 and 1776 there appeared at Florence a Storia Naturale deyli Uccelli, in five folio volumes, containing a number of ill-drawn and ill-coloured figures from the collection of Giovanni Gerini, an ardent collector who died in 1751, and therefore must be acquitted of any share in the work, which, though sometimes attributed to him, is that of certain learned men who did not happen to be ornitho logists (&amp;lt;f. Savi, Ornitoloyia Toscana, i. Introduzione, p. v). 3 lie retired on the completion of the sixth volume, and thereupon Buffon associated Bexoa with himself. that carefully read them, however much occasional expres sions, or even the general tone of the author, may grate upon their feelings. He too was the first man who formed any theory that may be called reasonable of the Geographical Distribution of Animals, though this theory was scarcely touched in the ornithological portion of his work, and has since proved to be not in accordance with facts. He pro claimed the variability of species in opposition to the views of Linnams as to their fixity, and moreover supposed that this variability arose in part by degradation. 4 Taking his labours as a whole, there cannot be a doubt that he enor mously enlarged the purview of naturalists, and, even if limited to Birtls, that, on the completion of his work upon them in 1783, Ornithology stood in a very different position from that which it had before occupied. Because he opposed the system of Linmeus he has been said to be opposed to systems in general ; but that is scarcely correct, for he had a system of his own ; and, as we now see it, it appears neither much better nor much worse than the systems which had been hitherto invented, or perhaps than any which was for many years to come propounded. It is certain that he despised any kind of scientific phraseology a crime in the eyes of those who consider precise nomenclature to be the end of science ; but those who deem it merely a means whereby knowledge can be securely stored will take a different view and have done so. Great as were the services of Buffon to Ornithology in Latham. one direction, those of a wholly different kind rendered by our countryman JOHN LATHAM must not be overlooked. In 1781 he began a work the practical utility of which was immediately recognized. This was his General Synopsis of Birds, and, though formed generally on the model of Linnaeus, greatly diverged in some respects there from. The classification was modified, chiefly on the old lines of Willughby and Ray, a nd certainly for the better ; but no scientific nomenclature was adopted, which, as the author subsequently found, was a change for the worse. His scope was co-extensive with that of Brisson, but Latham did not possess the inborn faculty of picking out the character wherein one species differs from another. His opportunities of becoming acquainted with Birds were hardly inferior to Brisson s, for during Latham s long life time there poured in upon him countless new discoveries from all parts of the world, but especially from the newly- explored shores of Australia and the islands of the Pacific Ocean. The British Museum had been formed, and he had access to everything it contained in addition to the abundant materials afforded him by the private Museum of Sir Ashton Lever. 5 Latham entered, so far as the limits of his work would allow, into the history of the Birds he described, and this with evident zest, whereby he differed from his French predecessor; but the number of cases in which he erred as to the determination of his species must be very great, and not unfrequently the same species is described more than once. His Synopsis was finished in 1785; two supplements were added in 1787 and 1802, 6 and in 1790 he produced an abstract of the work under the title of Index Ornitkoloaicus, wherein he assigned names on the Linnaian method to all the species described. Not to recur again to his labours, it may be said here that between 1821 and 1828 he published at Winchester, in eleven volumes, an enlarged edition of his original work, entitling it A General History of Birds ; but his defects as 4 See Prof. Mivart s address to the Section of Biology, Rep. Erit. Association (Sheffield Meeting^, 1879, p. 356. 5 In 1792 SHAW began the Museum Lcvcri.anum in illustration of this collection, which was finally dispersed by sale, and what is known to remain of it found its way to Vienna. Of the specimens in the British Museum described by Latham it is to be feared that ;;iarc(-ly any exist. They were probably very imperfectly prepared.
 * A German translation by Bechstein subsequently appeared.