Manual of the birds of New Zealand

A$600 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

Limited edition

Wellington : George Didsbury, Government Printer, 1882. Octavo, gilt-lettered binder s cloth (corners bumped, wear to head and foot of spine), pp. xii; 107; [blank]; iii (list of publications); [blank], illustrated with 39 black and white lithographs on tinted blocks, previous owner s name to endpaper, a couple of occasional spots of foxing, internally clean. Sir Walter Lawry Buller was born at the Wesleyan mission, Newark, at Pakanae in the Hokianga in 1838, the son of Methodist missionary Rev. James Buller. In 1854 the family moved to Wellington where he was befriended by naturalist William Swainson. Buller trained as a lawyer but is best known for his contribution to ornithology in New Zealand. In 1871 F. W. Hutton s Catalogue of the Birds of New Zealand was published in Wellington, prepared by direction of Dr. Hector, with the view of enabling naturalists in New Zealand to name correctly any bird whose habits they may have noticed, and so render their observations useful to science (from the Introduction). In 1873, Walter Lawry Buller s A history of the birds of New Zealand was published, which won Buller much critical acclaim, including from Charles Darwin, and for it he was awarded the CMG in 1875. It has been remarked by a celebrated naturalist that New Zealand is the most interesting ornithological province in the world It has been the author s desire to collect and place on record a complete life-history of these birds before their final extirpation (prospectus to th

• Binding: Hardcover

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