Voyage dans l'Amérique Méridionale (le Brésil, la République
Orientale, de l'Uruguay, la République Argentine, la Patagonie,
la République du Chili, la République de Bolivia, la République
du Pérou), exécuté pendant les Années 1826-33. Vol. IV. Oiseaux.
Paris, 1835-44. 4to, 396 pp., 66 pl.
After Azara's 'Apuntamientos' this is the most important of the older
publications relating to Argentine ornithology. The celebrated French
traveller and naturalist d'Orbigny made extensive collections of birds
in several parts of the Argentine Republic, especially in Corrientes,
on the Paraná, near Buenos Ayres, and on the Rio Negro. The birds were
worked out by himself after his return home, with the assistance of the
well-known French ornithologist the Baron F. de la Fresnaye. The list
of them, with the descriptions of the new species, was first published
in two consecutive volumes of the 'Magasin de Zoologie' (for 1837
and 1838), with a separate title[13] and separately paged. It was
unfortunately never completed, and contains only the Accipitres,
Passeres, and Picariæ. The valuable notes and remarks of d'Orbigny were
subsequently published in the fourth volume of his 'Voyage,' of which
the title is given above. This work also, as is much to be regretted,
was brought to a sudden termination when only half finished.
[13] Synopsis avium ab Alcide d'Orbigny in ejus per Americam
meridionalem itinere collectarum et ab ipso viatore necnon A. de la
Fresnaye.
D'Orbigny's types are now mostly in the French National Collection at
Paris, though a few of them, which cannot be found there, are supposed
to have been retained in the De la Fresnaye Collection, and if so are
now in the museum of the Boston Society of Natural History.
PAGE, Capt. T. J.
See CASSIN, _suprà_, p. 223.