Abstract
Brisson and Buffon had helped to bring ornithology out of a general cultural context, which included everything from cookbooks to encyclopedias, and implicitly defined it as the scientific study of birds. In so doing they emphasized external morphology, natural history, iconography, nomenclature and classification. Brisson’s ornithology, conceived from the vantage point of a collection catalogue, focused primarily on external morphology and classification, whereas Buffon’s nine volumes were part of a general natural history, which originally was intended to cover all of its branches and consequently attempted a much broader sweep. Brisson and Buffon did not establish a scientific discipline, but they did demonstrate an approach to birds that was popularized, copied, and developed. In the two decades immediately following the appearance of Buffon’s Histoire naturelle des oiseaux the quantity and quality of ornithological publications increased. In part this development had been stimulated by the work that had just been done; in part it was a response to the arrival of exotic material and the potential of regional faunas which made the study exciting and fruitful.
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Notes
The literature on this subject is extensive. Quite useful are: Henri Daudin, De Linné à Jussieu. Les méthodes de la classification et l’idée de série en Botanique et en Zoologie (1740–1790), Paris, Alcan, 1926.
Emile Guyénot, Les Sciences de la vie aux XVII e et XVIII e siècles, Paris, Albin Michel; and P. R. Sloan, “John Locke, John Ray and the Problem of the Natural System”, Journal of the History of Biology, 1972, 5:1–53.
Louis-Jean-Marie Daubenton, “Introduction a l’histoire naturelle”, Encyclopédie méthodique. Histoire naturelle des animaux, Paris, Panekoucke, 1782, Vol. 1, p.iii.
See William Coleman, Georges Cuvier. Zoologist, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1964.
and Henry Daudin, Cuvier et Lamarck. Les classes zoologiques et Vidée de série animale (1790–1830), Paris, Alcan, 1926.
Leonard Jenyns, “Report on the Recent Progress and Present State of Zoology”, Report of the Third Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1834:143–148.
Lettres de Georges Cuvier à C. H. Pfaff, 1788–1792, sur Vhistoire naturelle, la politique, et la littérature. Traduites de Vaïlemand par Louis Marchant, Paris, Masson, 1858, p. 178.
Georges Cuvier, Le Règne animal distribué d’apres son organisation, pour servir de base a Vhistoire naturelle des animaux et d’introduction a l’anatomie comparée, Paris Deterville, 1817, Vol. 1, p. xxii.
Coleman, Georges Cuvier, p. 67.
Henri-Marie Decrotay de Blainville, “Sur l’emploi de la Sternum et de ses annexes pour l’établissement ou la confirmation des familles naturelles parmi les oiseaux”, Journal de Physique, de chemie, d’histoire naturelle et des arts, 1821, 92:185–186. Blainville’s memoir had been read at the Académie des sciences in 1815, but was not published until 1821 in the Journal de physique. It was known and discussed, although Blainville never completed the details.
His work inspired Dr. F. J. L’Herminer, who was given access to the comparative anatomy collection by Cuvier, and who published a detailed memoir on the subject, “Recherches sur l’appareil sternal des oiseaux, considéré sous le double rapport de l’ostéologie et de la myologie; suivies d’un Essai sur la distribution de cette classe de vertébrés, basée sur la considération du sternum et de ses annexes”, Mémoires de la Société Linnéenne de Paris, 1827:1–93. A second edition, with an introduction was published separately under the same title the following year (Paris, Desbeausseaux, 1828). The main features of L’Herminer’s sytem which was the same as Blainville’s, were that he established separate orders for the parrots, the ostriches and cassowarys, and the pigeons, bringing the number of orders from 6 to 9.
Louis-Pierre Vieillot, “Ornithologie”, Nouveau dictionnaire d’histoire naturelle, Paris, Deterville, 1818, Vol. 24, p. 69.
For an interesting discussion of Vieillot’s ornithology see Paul Oehser, “Louis Jean Pierre Vieillot (1748–1831)”, Auk, 1948, 65(4):568–576
and Georges Olivier, Un grand ornithologiste normand Louis-Pierre Vieillot. Sa Vie—Son Oeuvre, Fécamp, Durand, 1965, the printed version of a lecture given by Olivier at the Académie des sciences, belles-lettres et arts de Rouen in 1961 which draws heavñy on Oehser.
Caroli Aligeri, Prodromus Systematis Mammalium et Avium, Berlin, Salfeld, 1811.
Johann Karl Wilhelm Illiger, Versuch einer Systematischen vollständigen Terminologie für das Thierreich und Pflanzenreich, Helmstädt, Fleckeisen, 1800.
Ernst Mayr called attention to Illiger’s work in “Illiger and the Biological Species Concept”, Journal of the History of Biology, 1968, 1(2): 163–178.
More recently Phillip Sloan has discussed Mger’s importance in “Buffon, German Biology, and the Historical Interpretation of Biological Species”, British Journal for the History of Science, 1979, 12(41):109–153. Timothy Lenoir gives an excellent description of the Göttingen School where Blumenbach worked in “The Göttingen School and the Development of Transcendental Naturphilosophie in the Romantic Era”, Studies in History of Biology, 1981, 5:111–205.
In his monograph on pigeons Temminck divides the “tribe” of pigeons into three families and states “This subdivision is founded principally on the habits and the type of food proper to the birds which comprise these families”. C. J. Temminck, Histoire naturelle generale des pigeons et des Gallinacés, Amsterdam, Sepp, 1813, Vol. 1, p. 32.
C. J. Temminck, Observations sur la classification méthodique des oiseaux, et remarques sur l’analyse d’une nouvelle ornithologie élémentaire par L. P. Vieillot, Amsterdam, Dufour, 1817, p. 5.
In the introduction to the second edition of his Manuel, Temminck wrote that he had consulted all the major European collections with the exceptions of Madrid and Saint-Petersburg. C. J. Temminck, Manuel d’Ornithologie, ou Tableau systématique des oiseaux qui se trouvent en Europe; précéde d’une analyse du système général d’ornithologie, et suivi d’une table alphabétique des espèces, Paris, Dufour, 1820, Vol. 1, p. ix. He also did some field work, although more for aquatic animals than birds.
Ibid., pp. i–ii.
Alfred Newton, A Dictionary of Birds, London, Adam and Black, 1893–1896, p. 21.
See Ronsil, “L’art français”, Nissen, Die illustrierten Vogelbücher, and Anker, Bird Books and Bird Art.
Ronsil, “L’art français”, p. 33.
J. B. Audebert and L. P. Vieillot, Histoire naturelle et générale des Colibris, oiseaux-mouches, jacamars et promerops, Paris, Desray, 1802, p. 3.
Ronsil, “L’art français”, p. 37.
Louis-Pierre Vieillot’s, Histoire naturelle des plus beaux Oiseaux chanteurs de la zone torride, Paris, Dufour, 1805
Louis-Pierre Vieillot’s, Histoire naturelle des Oiseaux de l’Amérique septentrionale contenant un grand nombre d’espèces décrites ou figurées pour la première fois, Paris, Desray, 1807, are important icono-graphically.
Temminck, Histoire naturelle des pigeons, Vol. 1, p. 7.
William Thomson [Baron Kelvin], Popular Lectures and Addresses, London, Macmillan, 1889, Vol. 1, p. 73.
Temminck, Histoire naturelle des pigeons, Vol. 1, p. 18.
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© 1982 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
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Farber, P.L. (1982). Focus on Classification: Ornithology 1800–1820. In: The Emergence of Ornithology as a Scientific Discipline: 1760–1850. Studies in the History of Modern Science, vol 12. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-7819-5_6
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