Timeline of Ornithology - 18th Century

18th Century

• 1702 – Ferdinand Johann Adam von Pernau publishes a pioneering and very popular essay on bird behaviour.
• 1710 - Osservatorio Ornitologico di Arosio established
• 1713 - Death of the collector Johan de la Faille
• 1715 - Levinus Vincent publishes Wondertooneel der Nature the Wonder Theater of Nature
• 1716 - Peter the Great purchases the natural history collection of Albertus Seba
• 1724-1726 - François Valentijn and George Eberhard Rumpf give the first accounts of Birds of Paradise in Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën ("Old and New East-India")
• 1731-1738 Eleazar Albin publishes A Natural History of Birds
• 1731–1743 – Mark Catesby publishes his Natural History of Carolina, which contains coloured plates of the birds of that colony, Florida and the Bahamas
• 1733 - Great Northern Expedition leaves Saint Petersburg
• 1735 – First edition of Carolus Linnaeus' Systema Naturae. The classification of birds follows that of Ray
• 1737 - Giuseppe Zinanni writes the first book entirely devoted to the eggs and nests of birds Dell Uova Nidi e dei degli Uccelli published in Venice
• 1741 – Georg Steller studies the birds of the north Pacific on his voyage with Vitus Bering
• 1742-1743 - Johann Heinrich Zorn publishes Petino-theology, oder Versuch die Menschen durch naehere der Voegel zur Bewunderung, Liebe advises... c machtigsten... Schopffers aufzumuntern. Ornithotheology, or an encouragement to humanity, through a careful observation of birds, towards admiration, love and respect for their powerful, of the wise and good Creator.
• 1743 – George Edwards begins publication of his bird plates
• 1744 - Louisa Ulrika of Prussia becomes Queen of Sweden. She is a patron of Linnaeus.
• 1754 - Jean-Louis Alléon-Dulac publishes Mélange d'histoire naturelle
• 1756 - Wilhelm Heinrich Kramer publishesin Elenchus Vegetabilium and Animalium per Austriam inferiorem Observatorum
• 1756 - Louis Daniel Arnault de Nobleville publishes Histoire naturelle des animaux
• 1757 - Michel Adanson publishes Histoire naturelle du Senegal.
• 1759-1771 - Peter Ascanius Icones rerum naturalium
• 1760 – Mathurin Jacques Brisson's six-volume Ornithologie improves upon Linnaeus' classification

• 1763 - Erik Pontoppidan begins Den Danske atlas eller Konge-Riget Dannemark
• 1765 - Edme-Louis Daubenton engaged by Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon to supervise the illustration of his Histoire naturelle
• 1766-1769 French naturalist Philibert Commerçon accompanies Louis Antoine de Bougainville on a voyage of circumnavigation
• 1768–1780 – Voyages of James Cook to the Pacific and Australia during which many birds new to science are collected by Joseph Banks and Johann Reinhold Forster
• 1768 Ivan Lepyokhin explores the Volga reggion
• 1770–1783 – Buffon's Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux was the first work to take into account the geographical distribution of birds
• 1770 - Cornelius Nozeman begins work on Nederlandsche Vogelen
• 1774 - Jacob Christian Schäffer divides the birds into two families, Palmipedes (web-footed) and the much larger family Nudipedes (not web-footed) in Elementa Ornithologica.
• 1775 - Ashton Lever begins exhibiting his bird collection at a public museum called the Holophusikon
• 1776 – Francesco Cetti publishes Uccelli di Sardegna
• 1776 - Saverio Manetti publishes the monumental Storia naturale degli uccelli
• 1776 - Philipp Ludwig Statius Müller publishes Des Ritters Carl von Linné Königlich Schwedischen Leibarztes ...
• 1776 - Peter Brown publishes New illustrations of Zoology
• 1778 – Juan Ignacio Molina publishes Saggio sulla storia naturale del Chile which includes the first descriptions of many South American species
• 1778-1785 Félix Vicq-d'Azyr begins Mémoires pour servir à l'anatomie des oiseaux in Mémoires de l'Académie Royale des Sciences
• 1779-1780 Johann Friedrich Blumenbach Handbuch der Naturgeschichte; 12 editions and some translations. Published first in Göttingen by J. C. Dieterich
• 1780 Lazzaro Spallanzani Dissertationi di fisica animale e vegetale published.It includes investigations into bird physiology.
• 1782 - Pierre Joseph Buchoz Les dons merveilleux et diversement coloriés de la nature dans le règne animal, ou collection d’animaux précieusement coloriés (Paris : chez l'auteur)
• 1782 - Charles Joseph Panckoucke begins a publishing venture the Encyclopédie Méthodique
• 1782 - Johann Friedrich Blumenbach publishes Handbuch der Naturgeschichte
• 1784 - Teyler's Museum founded
• 1784 - Joseph Franz von Jacquin Beyträge zur Geschichte der Vögel
• 1785 – John Latham completes his Synopsis of Birds, which describes many birds collected in Australia and the Pacific Ocean. Thomas Pennant publishes Arctic Zoology.
• 1786-1789 - Anders Erikson Sparrman publishes Catalogue of the Museum Carlsonianum in which he described many of the specimens he had collected in South Africa and the South Pacific, some of which were new to science.In 1806 he published an Ornithology of Sweden
• 1787 - Carl Peter Thunberg publishes Museum naturalium Academiæ Upsaliensis
• 1786-1789 - Giovanni Antonio Scopoli describes birds collected by Pierre Sonnerat on his voyages.One is the Black Lory
• 1788 – Johann Friedrich Gmelin commences work on the 13th edition of Systema Naturae which includes the classification of many birds for the first time, especially those described by Latham

• 1788 - “de Arte Venandi cum Avibus” by Frederick II (d. 1250) published and compared favorably to contemporary science by Blasius Merrem and Johan Gottlobb Schneider
• 1789 – Publication of Gilbert White's Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne
• 1789-1813 - George Shaw commences The Naturalist's Miscellany or Coloured Figures Of Natural Objects; Drawn and Described Immediately From Nature
• 1790-1791 - Pierre Joseph Bonnaterre writes Tableau encyclopédique et méthodique des trois règnes de la nature, Ornithologie in Tableau encyclopédique et méthodique
• Joachim Johann Nepomuk Spalowsky - Beytrag zur Naturgeschichte der Vögel
• 1793 Friedrich Albrecht Anton Meyer publishes Systematisch-summarische Uebersicht der neuesten zoologischen Entdeckungen in Neuholland und Afrika
• 1794–6 James Bolton publishes Harmonia ruralis, an "essay towards a natural history of British songbirds", issued in two volumes.
• 1796 Johann Alois Senefelder invents the low cost printing technique of lithography.
• 1797 – François Le Vaillant begins publication of his Oiseaux d'Afrique giving details of species encountered on his exploration of South Africa. This work was translated into several languages and established his fame as a bird artist.
• 1797 - 1804 – Publication of Thomas Bewick's British Birds
• 1799 – François Marie Daudin writes Traité élémentaire et complet d'Ornithologie (Natural History of Birds), one of the first "modern" handbooks of ornithology, combining Linnean binomial nomenclature with the anatomical and physiological descriptions of Buffon. Unfortunately it was never completed.
• 1799 - Philippe-Isidore Picot de Lapeyrouse publishes Tables méthodiques des mammifères et des oiseaux observés dans le département de la Haute-Garonne. Also Bernard Germain de Lacépède, in Discours d'ouverture et de clôture du cours d'histoire naturelle, places the birds in 130 genera in 39 orders.
• 1799 - Alexander von Humboldt journeys to South America where he finds the Oilbird. He described it in 1817. Later in the trip he observed the behaviour of the Andean Condor