GMK
Well-known member
Widely known as one of the most famous and valuable of all bird books, Audubon’s The Birds of America, brought its author fame that lasts to this day. In a new paper in the Bulletin of the British Ornithologists’ Club, Matthew Halley reveals that the book might never have been published but for a ornithological con trick that Audubon initially pulled on an unsuspecting British nobility and scientific community.
The full paper is open access here: http://dx.doi.org/10.25226/bboc.v140i2.2020.a3
Matthew Halley has recently been interviewed on the ABA podcast about his research and the paper. You can listen here: https://www.aba.org/j-j-audubon-and...CSD_v-t8gIbwFBG4JrDx5y2PStEWS0WJOB1Yk4byXbA1w
This is the abstract to the paper, for a taster:
The Bird of Washington Falco washingtonii Audubon, 1827, was a new species of eagle published in the opening plates of John James Audubon’s influential work, The birds of America (1827–38). It was the first plate engraved by Robert Havell Jr. and the first new species Audubon described in his career. However, the Bird of Washington was published without specimen evidence and, to this day, no specimen with the anatomical characters in Audubon’s descriptions and plate has ever been found. To shed light on the case, I conducted an exhaustive search for primary (non-print) sources in multiple archives in the USA and transcripts in the literature. Here, I demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that Audubon’s painting of the Bird of Washington was not ‘faithfully figured from a fresh-killed specimen’, as he claimed, but was the product of both plagiarism and invention. The preponderance of evidence suggests that the Bird of Washington was an elaborate lie that Audubon concocted to convince members of the English nobility who were sympathetic to American affairs, to subscribe to and promote his work. Audubon rode his Bird of Washington to widespread fame and then actively maintained the ruse for more than 20 years, until his death, fuelling decades of confusion among scientists and the general public. The broad implications for Audubon-related scholarship and ornithology are discussed.
The full paper is open access here: http://dx.doi.org/10.25226/bboc.v140i2.2020.a3
Matthew Halley has recently been interviewed on the ABA podcast about his research and the paper. You can listen here: https://www.aba.org/j-j-audubon-and...CSD_v-t8gIbwFBG4JrDx5y2PStEWS0WJOB1Yk4byXbA1w
This is the abstract to the paper, for a taster:
The Bird of Washington Falco washingtonii Audubon, 1827, was a new species of eagle published in the opening plates of John James Audubon’s influential work, The birds of America (1827–38). It was the first plate engraved by Robert Havell Jr. and the first new species Audubon described in his career. However, the Bird of Washington was published without specimen evidence and, to this day, no specimen with the anatomical characters in Audubon’s descriptions and plate has ever been found. To shed light on the case, I conducted an exhaustive search for primary (non-print) sources in multiple archives in the USA and transcripts in the literature. Here, I demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that Audubon’s painting of the Bird of Washington was not ‘faithfully figured from a fresh-killed specimen’, as he claimed, but was the product of both plagiarism and invention. The preponderance of evidence suggests that the Bird of Washington was an elaborate lie that Audubon concocted to convince members of the English nobility who were sympathetic to American affairs, to subscribe to and promote his work. Audubon rode his Bird of Washington to widespread fame and then actively maintained the ruse for more than 20 years, until his death, fuelling decades of confusion among scientists and the general public. The broad implications for Audubon-related scholarship and ornithology are discussed.