A History of North American Birds . . . Land Birds [with] The Water Birds of North America. by Baird, S. F.; Brewer, T. M.; and Ridgway, R - 1875; 1884

Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1875; 1884. Very Good. 5 volumes quarto (28 cm); 36 hand-colored lithograph plates of birds after Ridgway, 64 hand-finished chromolithograph plates of land bird portraits, and 493 portraits of water birds, most of them hand-colored, after H.W. Elliot and Ridgway, 537 wood-engraved illustrations and vignettes in text after E. Sheppard and others. Not uniformly bound. Land Birds bound in maroon buckram over beveled boards, titled in gilt on spine and upper boards. Top edge gilt. Minor wear only. Provenance: Gift inscription from Harvard philanthropist and Massachusetts congressman Augustus Hemenway to Dr. Arthur Lincoln Reagh, dated 1900. Water Birds bound in original green cloth gold-stamped with a figures of birds on upper boards. Bookplate of Nathaniel Cushing Nash (1862-1915). Some shelf wear, especially to volume 1 (portions of binding's fore-edge lightly damaged by rodents), else about fine!

References: Martin sale 1346; Fine Bird Books 75; Ayer/Zimmer 34; Perrault 910, Nissen IVB 63, etc.

Spencer Fullerton Baird (1823-1888) was Audubon's chief apostle in the succession of American ornithologists. Audubon encouraged him personally by giving him a collection of his own bird specimens. Baird passed them on to the Smithsonian when he became assistant secretary to the fledgling institution in 1850.

This monumental survey quickly became the standard authority on North American birds for a generation. Baird, then with the Smithsonian, assembled the country's best talent behind it. For chief artist, he passed by the eminent names and chose his young protégé Robert Ridgway (1850-1929). Baird had warmly encouraged Ridgway, an enthusiastic boy-naturalist, by corresponding with him about birds and collecting, and sending him paper, paints, and tips on bird sketching. Ridgway believed with Baird that art should serve the rigors of taxonomy, and that illustration should be an instrument to field identification. Thus, rather than dramatic portraits of birds in action, Audubon style, Ridgway produced 64 lithograph plates of bird heads (appearing in color for the first time in the 1875 edition) showing field marks. This pattern would determine the arrangement and purpose of all subsequent field guides down to the present day.

A few copies of the 1875 printing included 36 additional full-page hand-colored lithographs of birds by Ridgway. These early works, depicting birds posed in habitat, are an anomaly in Ridgway's career, and a tribute to his teacher's teacher, J.J. Audubon.

Although published nine years apart, the 3 volumes on Land Birds and the two on Water Birds are considered a set, as offered here.