The Natural History of Birds
From the French of the Count de Buffon; Illustrated with Engravings, and a Preface, Notes, and Additions, by the Translator

The first comprehensive accounts of eighteenth-century ornithology, first published between 1770 and 1783 and translated into English in 1793.

Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (Author), William Smellie (Edited and translated by)

9781108023016, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 25 November 2010

554 pages, 27 b/w illus.
21.6 x 3.1 x 14 cm, 0.7 kg

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707–88), was a French mathematician who was considered one of the leading naturalists of the Enlightenment. An acquaintance of Voltaire and other intellectuals, he worked as Keeper at the Jardin du Roi from 1739, and this inspired him to research and publish a vast encyclopaedia and survey of natural history, the ground-breaking Histoire Naturelle, which he published in forty-four volumes between 1749 and 1804. These volumes, first published between 1770 and 1783 and translated into English in 1793, contain Buffon's survey and descriptions of birds from the Histoire Naturelle. Based on recorded observations of birds both in France and in other countries, these volumes provide detailed descriptions of various bird species, their habitats and behaviours and were the first publications to present a comprehensive account of eighteenth-century ornithology. Volume 4 covers foreign and domestic finches and flycatchers.

1. The canary finch
2. The habesh of Syria
3. The linnet
4. The minister
5. The bengals, and the senegals
6. The chaffinch
7. The brambling
8. The widows
9. The greenfinch
10. The goldfinch
11. The lesser redpoll
12. The siskin
13. The tanagres
14. The ortolan bunting
15. The reed bunting
16. The snow bunting
17. The rice bunting
18. The yellow bunting
19. The bulfinch
20. The coly
21. The manakins
22. The cock of the rock
23. The cotingas
24. Varieties of the pompadour
25. The guirarou
26. The anters
27. The agami
28. The tinamous
29. The tocro
30. The flycatchers
31. The moucherolles
32. The tyrants
33. Birds related to the flycatchers, the moucherolles, and the tyrants.

Subject Areas: Evolution [PSAJ]