The Natural History of Birds, Volume 9 From the French of the Count De Buffon: Illustrated with Engravings, and a Preface, Notes, and Additions, by the Translator

About this book

A reprint of a classical work in the Cambridge Library Collection.

Contents

1. The swan
2. The goose
3. The brent
4. The barnacle
5. The eider
6. The duck
7. The musk duck
8. The wigeon
9. The crested whistler
10. The whistler with red bill and yellow nostrils
11. The black-billed whistler
12. The gadwall
13. The shoveler
14. The pintail
15. The long-tailed duck from Newfoundland
16. The sheldrake
17. The pochard
18. The pochard
19. The millouinan
20. The golden eye
21. The morillon
22. The little morillon
23. The scoter
24. The double scoter
25. The broad-biller scoter
26. The beautiful crested duck
27. The little thick-headed duck
28. The collared duck of Newfoundland
29. The brown duck
30. The gray-headed duck
31. The white-faced duck
32. The marec and mareca, Brazilian ducks
33. The sarcelles
34. The petrels
35. The wandering albatross
36. The guillemot
37. The little guillemot
38. The puffin
39. The puffin of Kamtschatka
40. The penguins and the manchots
41. The little penguin

Notes and hints of certain species of birds that are uncertained or unknown
Appendix
Addenda

Customer Reviews

Biography

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 9 covers water fowl and related birds.