noun
Examples of ornithology in a Sentence
The local works on English birds are too numerous to be mentioned; almost every county has had its ornithology recorded.
The ornithology of New South Wales and Queensland is more varied and interesting than that of the other provinces.
But this is not the only way in which the author has rendered service to the advanced student of ornithology.
The account of its habits by Alexander Wilson is known to every student of ornithology, and Wilson's followers have had little to do but supplement his history with unimportant details.
He was the author of the appendices on botany (in part) and ornithology in Potter's History and Antiquities of Charnwood Forest (1842); Mr Macaulay's Character of the Clergy.
This name in seamen's ornithology applies to several other kinds of birds, and, though perhaps first given to those of this group, is nowadays most commonly used for the species of Tropic-Bird, the projecting middle feathers of the tail in each kind being intent, "Dunghunters."
His early familiarity with country life gave him a taste for natural history, especially botany and ornithology.
The ornithology of Norway has been treated in a great many papers by Herr Collett, some of which may be said to have been separately published as Norges Fugle (8vo, 1868; with a supplement, 1871), and The Ornithology of Northern Norway (8vo, 1872)-this last in English.
Noble's List of European Birds (1898) is a useful compilation, and Dresser's magnificent Eggs of the Birds of Europe is another great contribution by that author to European ornithology.
The good effects of " Faunal " works such as those named in the foregoing rapid survey none can doubt, but important as they are, they do not of themselves constitute ornithology as a science; and an inquiry, no less wide and far more recondite, still remains.
Looking on Miller's labours as we now can, we see that such errors as he committed are chiefly due to his want of special knowledge of ornithology, combined with the absence in several instances of sufficient materials for investigation.
Blanchard's investigations, if completed, would obviously have taken extraordinarily high rank among the highest contributions to ornithology.
But, relieved as it may be by reflections of this kind - dreams some may perhaps still call them - the study of ornithology has unquestionably become harder and more serious; and a corresponding change in the style of investigation, followed in the works that remain to be considered, will be immediately perceptible.
C. Marsh, by finding the imperfect fossilized tibia of a bird in the middle cretaceous shale of Kansas, Marsh, began a series of wonderful discoveries of great im portance to ornithology.
Apart from its intrinsic merits as a learned and valuable addition to classification, this work is interesting in the history of ornithology because of the wholesale changes of nomenclature it introduced as the result of much diligence and zeal in the application of the strict rule of priority to the names of birds.
In addition to an enormous body of new information chiefly on the shoulder girdle, the alar muscles and the nerve plexuses of birds, this work contained a critical and descriptive summary of practically the whole pre-existing literature on the structure of birds, and it is hardly necessary for the student of ornithology to refer to earlier literature at first hand.
From this tour Ray and Willughby returned laden with collections, on which they meant to base complete systematic descriptions of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. Willughby undertook the former part, but, dying in 1672, left only an ornithology and ichthyology, in themselves vast, for Ray to edit; while the latter used the botanical collections for the groundwork of his Methodus plantarum nova (1682), and his great Historia generalis plantarum (3 vols., 1686, 1688, _1704).
The ornithology is more interesting, on account at once of the birds native to the islands, and the stragglers from the African coast, which are chiefly brought over in winter, when the wind has blown for some time from the east.
The ornithology of India, though it is not considered so rich in specimens of gorgeous and variegated plumage as that of other tropical regions, contains many splendid and Birds.
He was the author of several works on ornithology, and presented his collections of bird skins and eggs to the British Museum.
He displayed an early predilection for zoology and ornithology, and in later life became a skilled and enthusiastic collector, particularly of African plants and birds.
The Teal is the Anas crecca of Linnaeus, Nettion crecca of modern ornithology, and the smallest of the European Anatidae, as well as one of the most abundant and highly esteemed for the table.
It has thus become the Chionis alba of ornithology.
Both words have passed into modern ornithology, the latter as the generic name of the STILT; and some writers have blended the two in the strange and impossible compound Haemantopus.
The ornithology of northern Africa presents a close resemblance to that of southern Europe, scarcely a species being found which does not also occur in the other countries bordering the Mediterranean.
But I confess that I am now inclined to think that there is a finer way of studying ornithology than this.
However, we welcome papers from any part of the world that are of general interest to field ornithology.
Bird experts at Cornell University's Lab of Ornithology also said the protest seemed overblown.
For the history of the classification of birds see the article Ornithology, where also the more important ornithological works are mentioned.
This elastic application renders it impossible in the following sketch of the history of ornithology to draw any sharp distinction between works that are emphatically ornithological and_those to which that title can only be attached by courtesy; for, since birds have always attracted far greater attention than any other group of animals with which in number or in importance they can be compared, there has grown up concerning them a literature of corresponding magnitude and of the widest range, extending from the recondite and laborious investigations of the morphologist and anatomist to the casual observations of the sportsman or the schoolboy.
Eleazar Albin between 1738 and 1740 produced a Natural History of Birds in three volumes of more modest dimensions; but he seems to have been ignorant of ornithology, and his coloured plates are greatly inferior to Catesby's.
Naumann humbly began at COthen a treatise on the birds of the principality of Anhalt, which on its completion in 1804 was found to have swollen into an ornithology of northern Germany and the neighbouring countries.
The other work to the importance of which on ornithology in England allusion has been made is Bewick's History of British Birds.
Another change has come over the condition of ornithology, as of kindred sciences, induced by the multiplication of learned societies which issue publications as well as of periodicals of greater or less scientific pretension.
Most of them are but luxuries, and there is some degree of truth in the remark of Andreas Wagner in his Report on the Progress of Zoology for 1843, drawn up for the Ray Society (p. 60), that they " are not adapted for the extension and promotion of science, but must inevitably, on account of their unnecessary costliness, constantly tend to reduce the number of naturalists who are able to avail themselves of them, and they thus enrich ornithology only to its ultimate injury."
In 1825 Jardine and Selby began a series of Illustrations of Ornithology, the several parts of which appeared at long and irregular intervals, so that it was not until 1839 that three volumes Jardine containing one hundred and fifty plates were completed.
In 1866 the succession was again taken up by the Exotic Ornithology of Messrs Sclater and Salvin, containing one Sclater hundred plates, representing one hundred and four and species, all from Central or South America, which are Salvia.
But, confining ourselves to what is here our special business, it is to be remarked that perhaps the heaviest blow dealt at these strange doctrines was that delivered by Rennie, who, in an edition of Montagu's Ornithological Dictionary (pp. xxxiii.-1v.), published in 1831 and again issued in 1833, attacked the Quinary System, and especially its application to ornithology by Vigors and Swainson, in a way that might perhaps have demolished it, had not the author mingled with his undoubtedly sound reason much that is foreign to any question with which a naturalist, as such, ought to deal - though that herein he was only following the example of one of his opponents, who had constantly treated the subject in like manner, is to be allowed.
In 1866 Mr Diggles commenced a similar publication, The Ornithology of Australia, but the coloured plates, though fairly drawn, are not comparable to those of his predecessor.
Then we have Selby's Illustrations of British Ornithology, two folio volumes of coloured plates engraved by himself, between 1821 and 1833, with letterpress also in two volumes (8vo, 1825-1833), a second edition of the first volume being also issued (1833), for the author, having yielded to the pressure of the " Quinarian " doctrines then in vogue, thought it necessary to adjust his classification accordingly, and it must be admitted that for information the 6 Copies are said to exist bearing the date 1814.
It is unnecessary to continue the 2 In this historical sketch of the progress of ornithology it has not been thought necessary to mention other oological works, since they have not a taxonomic bearing, and the chief of them have been already named (see Birds).
The above abstract shows the general drift of this very remarkable contribution to ornithology, and it has to be added that for by far the greater number of his minor groups Huxley relied solely on the form of the palatal structure, the importance of which Dr Cornay had before urged, though to so little purpose.
Thus instead of contenting himself with terms that had met with pretty general approval, such as class, subclass, order, suborder, family, subfamily, and so on, he introduced into his final scheme other designations, " agmen," " cohors," " phalanx," and the like, which to the ordinary student of ornithology convey an indefinite meaning, if any meaning at all.
Garrod was the more skilled and ingenious anatomist, Forbes had a greater acquaintance with the ornithology of museums and collectors.
Ayes (see Bird and Ornithology).
Willughby's Ornithology (p. 12 9), "there is no bird secures her young ones better from the Monkeys, which are very noisom to the young of most Birds.
Donald also monitors wetland bird stocks in the area on behalf of the British Trust for Ornithology.
In the following year appeared the Onomasticon Zooicon of Walter Charleton, which contains some information on ornithology.
He seems to have regarded the work just named as a necessary precursor to his own labours in ornithology.
Several other works bearing upon ornithology in general, but of less importance than most of those just named, belong to this period.