The development of ornithology in central Europe

Abstract

The first ornithologist since Aristotle was the emperor Friedrich II of Hohenstaufen whose work on falconry (written before 1248) includes a general account of birds based largely on his personal observations. Other medieval workers on birds were Albertus Magnus, Thomas di Cantimpré and Konrad von Megenberg. Gybertus Longolius (1544) and William Turner (1544) reported on some birds of the Rhine region. The Renaissance encyclopedist Conrad Gessner (1555) compiled the total knowledge of European birds listing over 182 species mostly in alphabetical order. The world’s first local vertebrate fauna was the Theriotropheum Silesiae (1603) noted by Caspar Schwenckfeld who included brief accounts of about 150 species of birds. Several collections of unpublished bird paintings from the late-16th and the 17th centuries also represent valuable faunistic records. Around 1700, two separate research traditions in Europe originated from the work of John Ray (1627–1705) in England: (1) Research into the systematics of birds and (2) research into the field natural history of birds. Early systematists in Germany were J.Th. Klein, H.G. Moehring, J.C. Schaeffer, P.S. Pallas, and B. Merrem. They were all typologists—like their successors during the 19th century—and assumed that bird species, although somewhat variable, are rigidly delimited and never gave rise to new species. The principal representatives of the early field ornithology in Germany were Johann Ferdinand Adam von Pernau and Johann Heinrich Zorn, who published the results of their important field studies during the first half of the 18th century. They worked under the concepts of physico-theology employing the teleological principle and were the first truly significant researchers of the biology of European birds. The first German bird book with excellent folio color plates was from Johann Leonhard Frisch, which appeared 1733–1763. Around 1800, two detailed handbooks on the birds of Germany were published by Johann Matthäus Bechstein and by Johann Andreas Naumann, respectively. Bechstein’s text is more extensive than that of Naumann, but the latter’s color plates (prepared by his son Johann Friedrich) are superior to those in Bechstein’s books. The ‘Golden Age’ of central European field ornithology from 1820 to 1850 saw the appearance of the splendid works of Johann Friedrich Naumann, Christian Ludwig Brehm, and Friedrich Faber, who established a sound basis for the study of birds in this region and beyond. During the second half of the 19th century, many European researchers turned their attention to exotic ornithology, because large bird collections arrived in Europe from many different parts of the world. During those decades, the study of central European birds made only little progress (despite a major controversy on the instinctive versus purposive behavior of birds, which, however, did not stimulate any field research). The influence of Darwin’s theory of evolution (1859) among central European ornithologists remained only slight until the end of the 19th century. From the 1920s onward, central European ornithology changed rapidly and general biological studies were emphasized over the earlier systematic-faunistic work. This development led to an integration of the two previously separated research traditions and to a fundamental paradigm change, which had a worldwide impact (the “Stresemann revolution”). It was soon recognized that the bird is a well-suited subject for studies into the problems of functional morphology, physiology, behavior, and orientation of animals. The two key figures of European ornithology during the last several centuries were (1) John Ray, who around 1700 established the two main research traditions—systematic ornithology and field ornithology—and (2) Erwin Stresemann who from 1921 onward reunited both of them in the New Avian Biology.

Appendix: A brief overview of British ornithology during the 18th and 19th centuries

The two research traditions which originated from the work of John Ray around 1700, systematic ornithology and field natural history, were well developed in the UK during the 18th and 19th centuries and into the mid 20th century (Fig. 7), when they merged and became part of the global New Avian Biology. The systematists were the professionals at the developing museums who named and classified species from overseas, whereas the field belonged to the amateurs who studied living organisms in their natural environments. There was only little intellectual contact between the two groups. Museum men held all the top scientific posts and dominated the learned societies and journals (Barber 1980). According to Mullens (1909: 392) museum men even “united in a common hatred and contempt for the field-naturalists. [...] Most of the really important contributions to the literature of ornithology had come from the pen of the field-naturalists, but these works were not deemed “scientific” and the chamber-naturalists regarded them as but of small account.”

Fig. 7

The development of ornithology in the UK. Asterisks denote significant publications. No horizontal scale

Systematic ornithology

The expansion of the British empire from the late 18th and early 19th centuries onward led to a tremendous increase in the number of collections of birds and other animals (and plants) which reached the main museums in the country leading to the publication of several books on the classification, occurrence and distribution of birds: E. Albin (1731–1738), G. Edwards (1743–1751, 1758–1764), and T. Pennant (1761–1766). Justly famous is John Gould who recognized that most of Charles Darwin’s very different-looking songbirds from the Galapagos Islands are closely related members of one family (the Darwin’s Finches). As an entrepreneur and independent scientist of the 19th century, Gould produced a long series of beautifully illustrated monographs of the toucans (1833–1835, second edition 1852–1854, German edition 1841–1847), trogons (1836–1838, 1858–1875), hummingbirds (1849–1861, 1880–1887), the regional avifaunas of Australia (1837–1838, 1840–1848, 1865), the Himalayas (1830–1833), Europe (1832–1837), Asia (1849–1883), Great Britain (1862–1873), New Guinea (1875–1888) and other regions. He contributed enormously to the growth of systematic ornithological knowledge in those years, but his work remains underrated [Walters’ (2003, p. 128) negative evaluation of Gould’s work is almost certainly wrong; see also Olson 1997]. Two works both entitled History of British Birds began to appear in 1837, one by MacGillivray in five volumes and the other by William Yarrell in three volumes. Both works also included important field data of local birds.

The two systematists who dominated British ornithology during the second half of the 19th century were Philip Lutley Sclater at the Zoological Society of London and Richard Bowdler Sharpe at the British Museum (Natural History) in London. The latter edited and wrote himself part of the famous 27-volume Catalogue of the Birds in the British Museum (1874–1898), an overview of the birds of the world known during those years. Henry Seebohm and the Tring ornithologists Lord Walter Rothschild and Ernst Hartert modernized systematic ornithology by formally introducing the subspecies concept and trinominal nomenclature during the 1890s which, at first, was resisted by the ornithological establishment in Great Britain. However, by the time Hartert had completed his 3-volume work on the Birds of the Palaearctic Fauna (1905–1922), he had convinced almost all ornithologists.

P.L. Sclater’s son, William L. Sclater, edited the ‘Ibis’ under the traditional policy from 1913 until 1930 and was followed by C.B. Ticehurst during the period 1931–1941. He also resisted suggestions to modernize the journal, but his successor C.H.B. Grant nominated David Lack as ‘Biological Assistant’ in 1942 (see above).

Field natural history

The Reverend William Derham was a student of John Ray and wrote the influential books on Physico-theology (1713) and Astro-theology (1715). However, from about 1725 until 1765 the study of field natural history stagnated like the economy of the country. This was the “empty quarter” of the 18th century, when “the entire world of learning settled back, gave a great yawn and was soon fast asleep” (Allen 1993, p. 339). Natural history studies recovered during the last 40 years of this century through the impact of the ideas of Linnaeus and the publication of D. Barrington’s Naturalist’s Journal and T. Pennant’s British Zoology. Starting in the 1760s, numerous people, including the famous Reverend Gilbert White, took up natural history studies. The latter’s intellectual mentors had been John Ray and William Derham. In 1767 White began corresponding with D. Barrington and Thomas Pennant on his observations and in 1789 White published a selection of these letters. His charming little book on the Natural History of Selborne (the village where he lived) is a collection of isolated field observations of the local birds and the vegetation, climate and other phenomena (a somewhat shortened German translation under the title Beyträge zur Naturgeschichte von England was published by F.A.A. Meyer at Berlin in 1792). He was the first person to observe, e.g., that swifts copulate on the wing, that male and female chaffinches form separate flocks in winter and he was the first to examine many birds’ droppings to determine their diet. He is also often credited of having been the first to distinguish on the basis of their songs the closely similar species of Chiffchaff (Phylloscopus collybita), Willow Warbler (Ph. trochilus) and Wood Warbler (Ph. sibilatrix). However, he himself pointed out that W. Derham already knew the distinctness of the former two species mentioned above (Winker 2005). Several English editions of Buffon’s Natural History of Birds appeared from 1775 onward (Loveland 2004) and had an enormous influence on subsequent generations of fieldworkers. During the 1780s, Edward Jenner published his observations on the brood parasitism of the Cuckoo (being unaware of the earlier work of J.H. Zorn and A. Lottinger on the continent); Jenner’s manuscript on bird migration originated at about the same time, but was not published until many years later (Kilham 1973).

Around 1800, Thomas Bewick (1797, 1804) and George Montagu (1802, 1813) established the foundations of British field ornithology and popularized the study of birds. The Scottish academic James Rennie (1831) produced a revised and enlarged edition of Montagu’s Ornithological Dictionary. Rennie referred to the naturalists of the physico-theological research tradition as “philosophical naturalists and original observers” whose works comprised “inquiries into the causes and reasons of what is observed, for the purpose of either supporting theories [...] or illustrating the providential wisdom of the great Creator” (cited from Birkhead, Ms, p. 37). Religiously motivated natural history studies (physico-theology, natural theology) continued in Britain on a broad front into the 19th century (e.g., William Paley), whereas its influence was much reduced in Germany toward the end of the 18th century and was restricted to only a few ornithologists, e.g., the pastor C.L. Brehm, during the 19th century. Rennie published (anonymously) three books on bird architecture (1831), domestic habits (1833), and faculties of birds (1835) which included many original observations and provided interesting summaries of the then available biological knowledge of birds (German translations of these books appeared in 1833/1847, 1835, and 1839, respectively). In the first of these books, the author deviated from the usual systematic treatment and classified the birds on the basis of differences in nest construction like digging, platform building, braiding, weaving, stitching, cementing, etc.

Charles Darwin’s cooperation with animal breeders since the return from his expedition on board the Beagle in 1836 and his rearing of pigeons and domestic fowl at his home in Down led him to recognize the immense biological significance of individual variation in the context of his theory of natural selection (which he formulated privately in 1838; Mayr 1991). British authors who published excellent field natural history studies from 1900 onward were E. Selous, E. Howard, and others (see above). However, they remained on the fringe of British ornithology which, throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, was dominated by the representatives of systematic ornithology.