collections formed by a certain nobleman who had travelled in Eastern Europe, Western Asia and Egypt—possible Breidenbach, an account of whose travels in the Levant was printed at Mentz in 1486—it is really a medical treatise, and its zoological portion is mainly an abbreviation of the writings of Albertus Magnus, with a few interpolations from Isidorus of Seville (who flourished in the beginning of the 7th century, and was the author of many works highly esteemed in the middle ages) and a work known as Physiologus (q.v.). The third tractatus of this volume deals with birds—including among them bats, bees and other flying creatures; but as it is the first printed book in which figures of birds are introduced it merits notice, though most of the illustrations, which are rude woodcuts, fail, even in the coloured copies, to give any precise indication of the species intended to be represented.
The revival of learning was at hand, and William Turner, a Northumbrian, while residing abroad to avoid persecution at home, printed at Cologne in 1544 the first commentary on the birds mentioned by Aristotle and Pliny conceived in anything like the spirit that moves modern naturalists.[1] In the same year and from the same press was issued a Dialogus de Avibus by Gybertus Longolius, and in 1570 Caius brought out in London his treatise De rariorum animalium atque stirpium historia. In this last work, small though it be, ornithology has a good share; and all three may still be consulted with interest and advantage by its votaries.[2] Meanwhile the study received a great impulse from the appearance, at Zurich in 1555, of the third book of Conrad Gesner's Historia Animalium “qvi est de Auium natura,” and at Paris in the same year of Pierre Belon's (Bellonius) Histoire de la nature des Oyseaux. Gesner brought an amount of erudition, hitherto unequalled, to bear upon his subject; and, making due allowance for the times in which he wrote, his judgment must in most respects be deemed excellent. In his work, however, there is little that can be called systematic treatment. Like nearly all his predecessors since Aelian, he adopted an alphabetical arrangement, though this was not too pedantically preserved, and did not hinder him from placing together the kinds of birds which he supposed (and generally supposed rightly) to have the most resemblance to that one whose name, being best known, was chosen for the headpiece (as it were) of his particular theme, thus recognizing to some extent the principle of classification.[3] Belon, with perhaps less book-learning than his contemporary, was evidently no mean scholar, and undoubtedly had more practical knowledge of birds—their internal as well as external structure. Hence his work, written in French, contains a far greater amount of original matter; and his personal observations made in many countries, from England to Egypt, enabled him to avoid most of the puerilities which disfigure other works of his own or of a preceding age. Besides this, Belon disposed the birds known to him according to a definite system, which (rude as we now know it to be) formed a foundation on which several of his successors were content to build, and even to this day traces of its influence may still be discerned in the arrangement followed by writers who have faintly appreciated the principles on which modern taxonomers rest the outline of their schemes. Both his work and that of Gesner were illustrated with woodcuts, many of which display much spirit and regard to accuracy.
Belon, as has just been said, had a knowledge of the anatomy of birds, and he seems to have been the first to institute a direct comparison of their skeleton with that of man; but in this respect he only anticipated by a few years the more precise researches of Volcher Coiter, a Frisian, who in 1573 and 1575 published at Nuremberg two treatises, in one of which the internal structure of birds in general is very creditably described, while in the other the osteology and myology of certain forms is given in considerable detail, and illustrated by carefully drawn figures. The first is entitled Externarum et internarum principalium humani corporis Tabulae, &c. while the second, which is the most valuable, is merely appended to the Lectiones Gabrielis Fallopii de partibus similaribus humani corporis, &c., and thus, the scope of each work being regarded as medical, the author's labours were wholly overlooked by the mere natural historians who followed, though Coiter introduced a table, “De differentiis Auium,” furnishing a key to a rough classification of such birds as were known to him, and this as nearly the first attempt of the kind deserves notice here.
Contemporary with these three men was Ulysses Aldrovandus, a Bolognese, who wrote an Historia Naturalium in sixteen folio volumes, most of which were not printed till after his death in 1605; but those on birds appeared between 1599 and 1603. The work is almost wholly a compilation, and that not of the most discriminative kind, while a peculiar jealousy of Gesner is continuously displayed, though his statements are very constantly quoted—nearly always as those of “Ornithologus,” his name appearing but few times in the text, and not at all in the list of authors cited. With certain modifications in principle not very important, but characterized by much more elaborate detail, Aldrovandus adopted Belon's method of arrangement, but in a few respects there is a manifest retrogression. The work of Aldrovandus was illustrated by copper plates, but none of his figures approach those of his immediate predecessors in character or accuracy. Nevertheless the book was eagerly sought, and several editions of it appeared.[4]
Mention must be made of a medical treatise by Caspar Schwenckfeld, published at Liegnitz in 1603, under the title of Theriotropheum Silesiae, the fourth book of which consists of an “Aviarium Silesiae,” and is the earliest of the works we now know by the name of fauna. The author was well acquainted with the labours of his predecessors, as his list of over one hundred of them testifies. Most of the birds he describes are characterized with accuracy sufficient to enable them to be identified, and his observations upon them have still some interest; but he was innocent of any methodical system, and was not exempt from most of the professional fallacies of his time.[5]
Hitherto, from the nature of the case, the works aforesaid treated of scarcely any but the birds belonging to the orbis veteribus notus; but the geographical discoveries of the 16th century began to bear fruit, and many animals of kinds unsuspected were, about one hundred years later, made known. Here there is only space to name Bontius, Clusius, Hernandez (or Fernandez), Marcgrave, Nieremberg and Piso,[6] whose several works describing the natural products of both the Indies—whether the result of their own observation or compilation—together with those of Olina and Worm, produced a marked effect, since they led up to what may be deemed the foundation of scientific ornithology.[7]
- ↑ This was reprinted at Cambridge in 1823 by Dr George Thackeray.
- ↑ The Seventh of Wotton's De differentiis animalium Libri Decem, published at Paris in 1552, treats of birds; but his work is merely a compilation from Aristotle and Pliny, with references to other classical writers who have mere or less incidentally mentioned birds and other animals. The author in his preface states—“Veterum scriptorum sententias in unum quasi cumulem coaceruaui, de meo nihil addidi.” Nevertheless he makes some attempt at a systematic arrangement of birds, which, according to his lights, is far from despicable.
- ↑ For instance, under the title of “Accipiter” we have to look, not only for the sparrow-hawk and gos-hawk, but for many other birds of the family (as we now call it) removed comparatively far from those species by modern ornithologists.
- ↑ The Historia Naturalis of Johannes Johnstonus, said to be of Scottish descent but by birth a Pole, ran through several editions during the 17th century, but is little more than an epitome of the work of Aldrovandus.
- ↑ The Hierozoicon of Bochart—a treatise on the animals named in Holy Writ—was published in 1619.
- ↑ For Lichtenstein's determination of the birds described by Marcgrave and Piso see the Abhandlungen of the Berlin Academy for 1817 (pp. 155 seq.).
- ↑ The earliest list of British birds seems to be that in the Pinax Rerum Naturalium of Christopher Merrett, published in 1667. In the following year appeared the Onomasticon Zooicon of Walter Charleton, which contains some information on ornithology. An enlarged edition of the latter, under the title of Exercitationes, &c., was published in 1677; but neither of these writers is of much authority. In 1684 Sibbald in his Scotia illustrata published the earliest Fauna of Scotland.
