Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/24

 u ORNITHOLOGY though many are piracies from Bewick, and the whole is a most unsatisfactory performance. Of a very different kind is the next we have to notice, the Prodromus linger. Systematis Mdmmalium et Ainum of ILLIGER, published at Berlin in 1811, which must in its day have been a valu able little manual, and on many points it may now be consulted to advantage the characters of the Genera being admirably given, and good explanatory lists of the technical terms of Ornithology furnished. The classifica tion was quite new, and made a step distinctly in advance Vieillot. of anything that had before appeared. 1 In 1816 VIEILLOT published at Paris an Analyse d une nouvelle Ornithologie elementaire, containing a method of classification which he had tried in vain to get printed before, both in Turin and in London. 2 Some of the ideas in this are said to have been taken from Illiger ; but the two systems seem to be wholly distinct. Yieillot s was afterwards more fully expounded in the series of articles which he contributed between 1816 and 1819 to the Second Edition of the Nouveau Dictionnaire d Histoire NatureUe containing much valuable information. The views of neither of these systema- Tem- tizers pleased TEMMINCK, who in 1817 replied rather mitick. sharply to Vieillot in some Observations sur la Classification mfthodique des Oiseaux, a pamphlet published at Amster dam, and prefixed to the second edition of his Manuel d Ornithologie, which appeared in 1820, an Analyse du Systeme General d&quot; Ornithologie. This proved a great suc cess, and his arrangement, though by no means simple, 3 was not only adopted by many ornithologists of almost every country, but still has some adherents. The follow- Ranzani. ing year RANZAXI of Bologna, in his Elementi di Zoologia a very respectable compilation came to treat of Birds, and then followed to some extent the plan of De Blain ville and Merrem (concerning which much more has to be said by and by) placing the Struthious Birds in an &quot;VVagler. Order by themselves. In 1827 WAGLER brought out the first part of a Systema Avium, in this form never com pleted, consisting of forty-nine detached monographs of as many genera, the species of which are most elaborately described. The arrangement he subsequently adopted for them and for other groups is to be found in his Natiirliches System der Amphibien (pp. 77-128), published in 1830, and is too fanciful to require any further attention. The Kaup. several attempts at system-making by KATTP, from his Allgemeine Zoologie in 1829 to his Ueber Classification der Vogel in 1849, were equally arbitrary and abortive; but his Skizzirte Entwickelungs-Geschichte in 1829 must be here named, as it is so often quoted on account of the number of new genera which the peculiar views he had embraced compelled him to invent. These views he shared more or less with Vigors and Swainson, and to them attention will be immediately especially invited, while consideration of the scheme gradually developed 1 Illiger may be considered the founder of the school of nomencla- tural purists He would not tolerate any of the &quot; barbarous &quot; generic terms adopted by other writers, though some had been in use for many years. 2 The method was communicated to the Turin Acndemy,10th January 1814, and was ordered to be printed (Mem. Ac. Sc. Turin, 1813-14, p. xxviii); but, through the derangements of that stormy period, the order was never carrie d out (Mem. Accad. Sc. Torino, xxiii. p. xcvii). The minute-bonk of the Linnean Society of London shews that his Pro- bisio was read at meetings of that Society between 15th November 1814 and 21st February 1815. Why it was not at once accepted is not told, but the entry respecting it, which must be of much later date, in the &quot; Register of Papers &quot; is &quot; Published already. &quot; It is due to Vieillot to mention these facts, as he has been accused of publishing his method in haste to anticipate some of Cuvier s views, but he might well complain of the delay in London. Some reparation has been made to his memory by the reprinting of his Analyse, by the Willughby Society. 3 He recognized sixteen Orders of Birds, while Vieiilot had been content with five, and Illiger with seven. from 1831 onward by CHARLES LUCIEN BONAPARTE, and Bona- still not without its influence, is deferred until we come parte. to treat of the rise and progress of what we may term the reformed school of Ornithology. Yet injustice would be done to one of the ablest of those now to be called the old masters of the science if mention were not here made of the Conspectus Generum Avium, begun in 1850 by the naturalist last named, with the help of SCHLEGEL, and Schlege unfortunately interrupted by its author s death six years later. 4 The systematic publications of GEORGE ROBERT G. i;. GRAY, so long in charge of the ornithological collection of Gray, the British Museum, began with A List of the Genera of Birds published in 1810. This, having been closely, though by no means in a hostile spirit, criticized by STRICKLAND (Ann. Nat. History, vi. p. 410; vii. pp. 26 Strick- and 159), was followed by a Second Edition in 1841, in lan(J - which nearly all the corrections of the reviewer were adopted, and in 1844 began the publication of The Genera of Birds, beautifully illustrated first by MITCHELL and afterwards by Mr WOLF which will always keep Gray s name in remembrance. The enormous labour required for this work seems scarcely to have been appreciated, though it remains to this day one of the most useful books in an ornithologist s library. Yet it must be confessed that its author was hardly an ornithologist but for the accident of his calling. He was a thoroughly conscientious clerk, devoted to his duty and unsparing of trouble. However, to have conceived the idea of executing a work on so grand a scale as this it forms three folio volumes, and contains one hundred and eighty-five coloured and one hundred and fi&amp;gt;rty-eight uncoloured plates, with references to upwards of two thousand four hundred generic names was in itself a mark of genius, and it was brought to a suc cessful conclusion in 1849, Costly as it necessarily was, it has been of great service to working ornithologists. In 1855 Gray brought out, as one of the Museum publica tions, A Catalogue of the Genera and Subgenera of Birds, a handy little volume, naturally founded on the larger works. Its chief drawback is that it does not give any more reference to the authority for a generic term than the name of its inventor and the year of its application, though of course more precise information would have at least doubled the size of the book. The same deficiency became still more apparent when, between 1869 and 1871, he published his Hand-List of Genera and Species of Birds in three octavo volumes (or parts, as they are called). Never was a book better named, for the working ornitho logist must almost live with it in his hand, and though he has constantly to deplore its shortcomings, one of which especially is the wrong principle on which its index is constructed, he should be thankful that- such a work exists. Many of its defects are, or perhaps it were better said ought to be, supplied by GIEBEL S Thesaurus Ornitho- Gk-bt-1. logix, also in three volumes, published between 1872 and 1877, a work admirably planned, but the execution of which, whether through the author s carelessness or the printer s fault, or a combination of both, is lamentably disappointing. Again and again it will afford the enquirer who consults it valuable hints, but he must be mindful never to trust a single reference in it until it has been verified. It remains to warn the reader also that, useful as are both this work and those of Gray, their utility is almost solely confined to experts. With the exception to which reference has just been made, scarcely any of the ornithologists hitherto named indulged their imagination in theories or speculations. Nearly all were content to prosecute their labours in a plain fashion consistent with common sense, plodding 4 To this very indispensable work 1805 by Dr Finsch. index was supplied in