Excerpt from The Osprey, Vol. 5
The fifth volume of The Osprey hrs been finished, and with it a well rounded period of fire years - a lustrum - has been completed. Maturity has been attained, and the desire to throw off the old plumage and to take on a new one, which has been felt for a long time, mar now be fitly realized. A moult is seasonable. With the present volume a first series of the magazine is brought to an end. A new one will follow.
The interest in the Journal was purchased by one of the managing editors at the instance of the late Doctor Coues after the first number of a third volume had been already issued. Various causes later entailed upon the purchaser the necessity of either abandoning it or continuing it under other auspices. The latter seemed to him to be the lesser of two evils, and he was fain to edit it himself with the assistance of the ablest of the ornithologists resident at Washington. Under such conditions the last two of the volumes have been published.
The style and typography adopted by the original editor was continued, but with some essential modifications, by Doctor Coues. Those modifications were introduced into the second number of the third volume.
A dislike to depart abruptly from a standard once adopted, influenced the succeeding editors in preserving, for the time being, the system as left by Doctor Coues. They were determined, however, at the end of a definite period, to assume a new dress and apply new methods. The time has now come.
The new series will be entitled as the old, but numbered as "second series, volume one" and so on; the numeration will be also continued from the first, however, and volume one will thus be "volume six of the complete series", etc. The text will be in large type (Small Pica or ll-point instead of Brevier or 10-point) and the numbers will consist of 24 in place of 16 pages, or the equivalents as plates, two pages being represented by one plate. The proportion of body and supplement will vary; sometimes 4 or 8 pages of the latter will be given with 16 or 20 pages of the former, and sometimes these proportions will be reversed.
The "Life and Times of William Swainson" is concluded in this volume. Originally it was intended to be completed in four numbers of The Osprey, but friends, in whose judgment the author and editors feel confidence, expressed approbation of the mode of treatment and urged that the life be made the medium of much interesting and important information respecting the conditions of science and "philosophy" in the time covered. The biography consequently was extended and has become, to some extent, the history of a peculiar and interesting stage of science prevalent in the third and forth decades of the past century. For a time, the ideas characteristic of that stage were dominant, and those who shared them looked down with scorn upon the humbler students who were content to deal with facts and with contempt upon poor anatomists, who were scarcely deemed entitled to be called zoologists! It is interesting to turn back and view, through the long vista of past years, the contrast between the approved ornithology of that time and the work done then and before that time by ornithotomists. The latter were not recognized as true ornithologists and were completely ignored by those who usurped the right to be exclusively so called. But those ornithotomists were laying the foundation stones of what is now recognized as the science of ornithology and the philosophy then regnant has long since been discarded.
For over two years, the editors have had in hand engraved portraits of a number of naturalists prominent in American ornithology as well as sketches of their lives. It was deemed inadvisable, however, to give undue prominence to biography and consequently that material has been held back until the Life of Swainson was finished. The time has now come to utilize the matter and the first of the lot wi. Это и многое другое вы найдете в книге The Osprey, Vol. 5 (Classic Reprint)