A History of British Birds is a natural history book by Thomas Bewick, published in two volumes. Volume 1, Land Birds, appeared in 1797. Volume 2, Water Birds, appeared in 1804. A supplement was published in 1821. The text in Land Birds was written by Ralph Beilby, while Bewick took over the text for the second volume. The book is admired mainly for the beauty and clarity of Bewick's wood-engravings, which are widely considered his finest work, and among the finest in that medium.
British Birds has been compared to works of poetry and literature. It plays a recurring role in Charlotte Brontë's novel Jane Eyre. William Wordsworth praised Bewick in the first lines of his poem "The Two Thieves": "Oh now that the genius of Bewick were mine, And the skill which he learned on the banks of the Tyne."
The book was effectively the first "field guide" for non-specialists. Bewick provides an accurate illustration of each species, from life if possible, or from skins. The common and scientific name(s) are listed, citing the naming authorities. The bird is described, with its distribution and behaviour, often with extensive quotations from printed sources or correspondents. Those who provided skins or information are acknowledged. The species are grouped into families such as "Of the Falcon", using the limited and conflicting scientific sources of the time. The families of land birds are further grouped into birds of prey, omnivorous birds, insectivorous birds, and granivorous birds, while the families of water birds are simply listed, with related families side by side.
Each species entry begins on a new page; any spaces at the ends of entries are filled with tail-pieces, small, often humorous woodcuts of country life. British Birds remains in print, and has attracted the attention of authors such as Jenny Uglow. Critics note Bewick's skill as a naturalist as well as an engraver.
Background
Early scientific works on birds, such as those of Conrad Gessner, Ulisse Aldrovandi and Pierre Belon, relied for much of their content on the authority of the Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle and the teachings of the church, and included much extraneous material relating to the species, such as proverbs, references in history and literature, or its use as an emblem. The arrangement of the species was by alphabetical order in Gessner's , and by arbitrary criteria in most other early works. In the late 16th and early 17th centuries, Francis Bacon had advocated the advancement of knowledge through observation and experiment, and the English Royal Society and its members such as John Ray, John Wilkins and Francis Willughby sought to put the empirical method into practice, including travelling widely to collect specimens and information.
The first modern ornithology, intended to describe all the then-known birds worldwide, was produced by Ray and Willughby and published in Latin as (Three Books of Ornithology) in 1676, and in English, as The Ornithology of Francis Willughby of Middleton, in 1678. Its innovative features were an effective classification system based on anatomical features, including the bird's beak, feet and overall size, and a dichotomous key, which helped readers to identify birds by guiding them to the page describing that group. The authors also placed an asterisk against species of which they had no first-hand knowledge, and were therefore unable to verify. The commercial success of the Ornithology is unknown, but it was historically significant, influencing writers including René Réaumur, Mathurin Jacques Brisson, Georges Cuvier and Carl Linnaeus in compiling their own works.
George Edwards was a leading British naturalist and illustrator in the 17th century. He was the librarian to the Royal College of Physicians with access to their collection of 8,000 books, and he used these, together with stuffed and live animals, to produce illustrated publications. His four-volume A Natural History of Uncommon Birds (1743–1751) and its three supplements covered more than 600 natural history topics, and his publications enabled Linnaeus to name 350 bird species, including many type specimens. When he was researching published sources for his bird project, Bewick relied particularly on Edwards' book and the multi-volume Histoire Naturelle of the French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon.
Thomas Bewick
Thomas Bewick was born at Cherryburn, a house in the parish of Mickley, Northumberland, and he was apprenticed at the age of 14 to Ralph Beilby, an engraver in Newcastle upon Tyne, and learnt how to engrave on wood and metal.
The business prospered, becoming Newcastle's leading engraving service with an enviable reputation for high-quality work and good service. Now partners, Bielby and Bewick published their History of Quadrupeds in 1790, and its success encouraged them to consider producing a new book on British birds. In preparation for this major work, Bewick spent several years engraving the necessary wood blocks.
Bewick became well known for his engravings, including the woodcuts for Oliver Goldsmith's Traveller and The Deserted Village, for Thomas Parnell's Hermit, and for William Somervile's Chase. Perhaps the best known of his prints is The Chillingham Bull, executed on an exceptionally large woodblock for Marmaduke Tunstall, a Yorkshire landowner. Bewick also produced and illustrated several editions of Aesop's Fables throughout his creative life. His success meant that Bewick had at least 30 pupils who worked for him and Beilby as apprentices, the first of whom was his younger brother John.
Bewick died at his home on 8 November 1828. He was buried in Ovingham churchyard, beside his late wife Isabella, who had died two years earlier on 1 February 1826, and not far from his parents and his brother John.
Approach
The preface to A History of British Birds states that "while one of the editors of this work was engaged in preparing the cuts, which are faithfully drawn from Nature, and engraved upon wood, the compilation of the descriptions .. (of the Land Birds) was undertaken by the other , subject, however, to the corrections of his friend, whose habits had led him to a more intimate acquaintance with this branch of Natural History", and goes on to mention that the compilation of text was the "production of those hours which could be spared from a laborious employment", namely the long hours of work engraving the minutely detailed wood printing blocks. What the preface does not say is the reason for this statement about the "editors", which was an angry stand-off between Bewick and Beilby. Beilby's original intention was to have an introduction which merely thanked Bewick for his "assistance", and a title-page naming Beilby as the sole author. Bewick's friend (and his wife's godfather) Thomas Hornby heard of this, and informed Bewick. An informal trade panel met to judge the matter, and the preface as printed was the result; Beilby's name did not appear on the title-page.
Each species of bird is presented in a few pages (generally between two and four; occasionally, as with the mallard or "Common Wild Duck", a few more). The first item is a woodcut print of the bird, always either perched or standing on the ground, even in the case of water birds – such as the smew – that (as winter visitors) do not nest in Britain, and consequently are rarely seen away from water there. Bewick then presents the name, with variations, and the Latin and French equivalents. For example, "The Musk Duck" is also named on the line below as "Cairo, Guinea, or Indian Duck", and the next line "(Anas moschata, Linn.—Le Canard Musque, Buff.)" provides the scholarly references to the giving of the Latin binomial by Linnaeus (Linn) and a French description by Buffon (Buff).
The text begins by stating the size of the bird. Bewick then describes the bird, typically in one paragraph, naming any notable features such as the colour of the eyes ("irides"), the bill, the legs, and plumage on each part of the body. Next, the origin and distribution of the species are discussed, with notes or quotations from authorities such as John Ray, Gilbert White and Buffon.
Bewick then mentions any other facts of interest about the bird; in the case of the musk duck, this concerns its "musky smell, which arises from the liquor secreted in the glands on the rump". If the bird hybridizes with other species, this is described, along with whether the hybrids are fertile ("productive").
Finally, Bewick acknowledges anyone who had helped him. The musk duck is stated to have been drawn from a "living specimen" which was however "excepting the head, entirely white", unlike the "general appearance" shown in the woodcut; the bird "was lent to this work by William Losh, Esq., of Point Pleasant, near Newcastle". Losh, one of Bewick's many collaborators, was a wealthy partner in Losh, Wilson and Bell, manufacturers of chemicals and iron. Many of the birds, especially the rarer species, were necessarily illustrated from skins rather than from life. For example, for the Sabine's snipe, "The author was favoured by N. A. Vigors, Esq., [who had described the supposed species] with a preserved specimen, from which the above figure is taken." In A Memoir (posthumously published in 1862), Bewick states that he intended to "stick to nature as closely as I could", but admits that he had "in several cases" to rely on the stuffed "preserved skins" of his neighbour Richard Routledge Wingate.
The grouping of species gave Bewick difficulty, as the scientific sources of the time did not agree on how to arrange the species in families, or on a sequence or grouping of those families. Bewick, for example, uses family groups like "Of the Falcon", in which he includes buzzards and sparrowhawks as well as what are now called falcons. The families of land birds are further grouped into birds of prey, omnivorous birds, insectivorous birds, and granivorous birds, while the families of water birds are simply listed, with what seemed to be related families, such as "Of the Anas" (ducks) and "Of the Mergus" (sawbill ducks), side by side.
Each account is closed with a miniature woodcut known from its position in the text as a tail-piece. These small artworks depict aspects of country life, often with humorous subjects, but all with Bewick's eye for detail, style, and precision. Some add to the illustration of the bird in question, as for example the heron, where the tail-piece shows one heron catching an eel, and another flying away. The tail-piece for Sabine's snipe, a gamebird, shows a hunter firing, and a small bird falling to the ground. There is no exclusion of human life from the images: one tail-piece depicts a works complete with smoking chimney beside a river.
Outline
Land birds
The first volume "containing the History and Description of Land Birds" begins with a preface, an introduction, and a list of technical terms illustrated with Bewick's woodcuts. The introduction begins:
In no part of the animal creation are the wisdom, the goodness, and the bounty of Providence displayed in a more lively manner than in the structure, formation, and various endowments of the feathered tribes.
The birds are divided into granivorous (grain eating) and carnivorous groups, which are explained in some detail. The speed, senses, flight, migration, pairing behaviour and feeding of birds are then discussed, with observations from Spallanzani and Gilbert White, whose Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne was published in 1789. The pleasure of watching birds is mentioned: