Birds Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. 3, No. 6, June 1898

VariousProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.6
Word count
62K words
Chapters
7

Tags

Other PhotographyNatural Sciences Natural HistoryColor PhotographyEcological NotesScience EnlightenmentNature ObservationBird AlphabetIllustrated GuideMagazine SelectionVisual Archive19th Century

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Birds Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. 3, No. 6, June 1898 by VariousAuthor: Various,Language: English, Class: QL: Science: Zoology, Release Date: Dec 12, 2014

Editor's review

This is a single issue from June 1898 of an illustrated catalog of birds in color photography, a rare early document that records birds through color photography. Its core value lies not in systematic ornithological argument but in showing the photographic technology, printing craft, and ways of observing nature of that era; the plates and explanatory text together form a tangible natural history archive. Readers can see how editors a century ago selected bird species and described their forms and habits, and can sense what color plates meant for circulation at the time. The text is in English and runs to the length of a single magazine issue, suitable for leisurely browsing by natural history enthusiasts or as a supplementary plate catalog for research in the history of science, printing, or photography. It need not be read straight through; it is better appreciated plate by plate, noting the observational records and period tone in the captions. Note that it is not a modern bird identification guide; classifications and names may have changed, so read it as a historical document.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. First browse all color plates, then return to the corresponding captions to build an intuitive impression.
  2. Prepare a modern bird checklist for comparison, noting differences in names and classification across eras.
  3. Treat the captions as historical text excerpts, focusing on observational perspective and descriptive language.
  4. Read only a small section at a time and zoom in on plate details rather than rushing through.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
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  6. 6
  7. 7

FAQ

Is this book a complete bird guide? No. It is a single issue from June 1898 of a color bird photography catalog, one installment of a magazine-style publication rather than a systematic guide covering all birds. It centers on the plates and captions selected for that issue, suitable for appreciation and historical reference, not as a complete identification manual.
Do I need a background in ornithology to read it? No specialized background is required. The plates are直观, and the captions are in English; general English reading ability suffices. To understand differences in classification and terminology across eras, a modern bird checklist can be kept for comparison, but no prior ornithology course is necessary.
Are the bird names and classifications in the book still usable today? They should not be used directly. The book was published in 1898, and bird classification and names have undergone many revisions since; some scientific or common names may have changed. Read it as a historical document and check name differences against modern checklists rather than treating it as a current standard.
Is this material better suited to research or leisure reading? Both, but with different emphases. For leisure, browse plate by plate and sense the tone of early color printing and nature observation; for research, focus on photographic technology, printing craft, editorial selection, and descriptive methods as supplementary material for the history of science or printing.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Various Author

Various is not a real person but a collective attribution used in book cataloging and databases for works with multiple authors, commonly applied to anthologies, compilations, or publications with too many contributors to list individually. On this Chinese book site, this attribution covers as many as 3,387 titles, spanning encyclopedic entries, historical documents, and trial records. Representative works include several volumes of the 11th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the record of the trial of the major war criminals before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. Available public information is limited: nationality, birth and death dates, and common categories are not clearly recorded, making it difficult to summarize a unified writing style or personal biography. Readers should understand it as a cataloging convention rather than a single author.