Paul Lawrence Farber

The Development of Taxidermy and the History of Ornithology

This is the publisher’s final pdf. The published article is copyrighted by The History of Science Society and can be found at: http://www.hssonline.org/.

Buffon and Daubenton: Divergent Traditions within the Histoire naturelle

This is the publisher’s final pdf. The published article is copyrighted by The History of Science Society and can be found at: http://www.hssonline.org/.

The Emergence of a Discipline: Ornithology 1820–1850

European society was fundamentally altered by the combined impact of social and economic revolutions in the late eighteenth century. By 1830 the effect of the ramifications of these two movements was evident. E. J. Hobsbawm wrote that: Whichever aspect of social life we survey, 1830 marks a turning-point in it… in the history of human migrations, social and geographical, in that of the arts and or ideology, it appears with equal prominence.1

Until Darwin: Science, Human Variety, and the Origins of Race

This is the publisher’s final pdf. The published book review is copyrighted by the University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science Society and can be found at: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/journals/journal/isis.html.

Brisson and Buffon: Ornithology 1760–1780

Two publications in the third quarter of the eighteenth century stand out as vanguards of a new type of study of birds: Mathurin-Jacques Brisson’s (1723–1806) Ornithologie and Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon’s (1707–1788) Histoire naturelle des oiseaux.

The Significance of the Emergence of Ornithology as a Scientific Discipline

To better appreciate the change that took place in less than a century in the study of birds we might contrast the two works that commenced this study with the one that concluded it. The differences between ornithology in the second half of the eighteenth century and ornithology in the middle of the nineteenth century are, indeed, well exemplified by comparing Brisson’s Ornithologie (1760) and Buffon’s Histoire naturelle des oiseaux (1770–1783) with Bonaparte’s Conspectus generum avium (1850).

Loci of New Data: Collections 1786–1830

The half century that witnessed the enormous influx of ornithological data also witnessed a corresponding transformation in natural history collections. Until the end of the 1790’s these collections continued as they had been for nearly a century, that is, in the amateur cabinet d’histoire naturelle tradition. They were general collections of natural history objects: shells, insects, minerals, a few quadrupeds and some birds, and often formed but a subsection of a larger general collection of objects d’art, antiquities, and books.1 The owner was normally not a naturalist, nor did he or she publish anything other than an occasional catalogue, usually a sale catalogue.2 The conception of a natural history cabinet therefore was more that of a collector’s than of a savant’s, and consequently aesthetic considerations were as important as scientific ones.3 These aesthetic concerns are reflected in the enormous attention paid to display.

Ornithological Publications: 1780–1800

The accelerating influx of ornithological data after Brisson and Buffon’s time was bound to have a profound impact on the nature of ornithology, although the manifestation of this influence was gradual and therefore undramatic. Natural history collections until roughly the turn of the century retained, for the most part their amateur curiosity cabinet status, and one finds in the ornithological literature a reflection of the patterns established by Brisson and Buffon. Brisson, as was described in chapter two, directed his attention to classification based on external morphological features, whereas Buffon attempted a broader natural history of birds. In a sense they epitomize two traditions in zoology; that of the taxonomist and that of the naturalist. This is not to suggest that zoologists necessarily have followed one approach exclusively; they have most often participated in both traditions, in differing degrees, or in others as well. In the ornithology of the late eighteenth century, the direction given by Brisson and Buffon is particularly evident for most of the literature consists of new editions, popularizations, attempts at updating or detailed investigations of a more narrow focus that supplemented Brisson or Buffon’s ornithology.

Knowledge of Birds in the Eighteenth Century

If asked what was known about birds, an eighteenth-century gentleman would have responded by saying that a great deal was known about them. Birds occupied a major position in eighteenth-century culture. There was, in fact, no escaping them, for in seemingly every cultural area their presence was apparent.

Focus on Classification: Ornithology 1800–1820

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.