Ornithological dictionary of British birds / By Colonel G. Montagu.

  • George Montagu
Date:
1833
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Ornithological dictionary of British birds / By Colonel G. Montagu. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    This is all which we are taught to believe “the industry of man has been able to discover concerning it ;” unless we suppose that Linnzeus by this means the references which he gives to ante- eedent authors.* Pennant’s description of the bird, though he had before him, in manuscript, the admirable account of a genuine naturalist, White of Selborne, is no less brief and poor; and Latham’s, though a little more circumstantial, is very meagre ;+ while Cuvier’s is equally brief, and half of it consists of credulous absurdity, asserting as ** well authenticated, that it falls into a le- thargic state during the winter, and even that it passes that season at the bottom of marshy waters!!!”+ Well may Dr. Fleming say, ‘itis painful to advert to the second era of British Zoology, during which the artificial method of Linnzeus occupied that place, which physiology had so successfully filled.” § Yet though Dr. Fleming deserves the esteem of every lover of nature for his Phi- losophy of Zoology, his subsequent work on the History of British Animals is more decidedly formed on the faulty model of the Linnean school, than that of Pennant which he stigmatises, and has no pretensions whatever to the title of History: his account of the bank swallow, indeed, is much inferior to that of Latham. I may be told that these several works cannot be justly com- pared, as their objects are different; but I answer, that they all exhibit a similar character of Linnean brevity, which I call defi- ciency, and consequently inaccuracy. In constructing his system of birds, Linnzeus looked only at the various forms of the bill, whence he makes six divisions or orders, the water birds most unnaturally ranking in the third and fourth, and separating the pies and the poultry (Galline.) In the descriptions of these orders, his inaccuracy in his attempts at generalization is very apparent. We were prepared for this, indeed, from his description of birds in general, which, he says, * Thid, page 3; “ Hoc nomen indigitat quecunque de nominato capere beneficio seculi innotuere.”—Linneus, Syst. Nat. Intr. + Gen. Hist. of Birds, vii. 289. + Griffith’s Cuvier, vii. 61.—“ Brune dessus et a la poitrine; la gorge et le dessous blanes. Elle pond dans des trous le long des eaux. I] parait constant quelle sengourdit pendant Vhiver, et méme qu'elle passe cette saison au fond de Peau des marais.”—Régne Animal, Tome i. p. 396. § British Animals, Pref. viii. ~
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