The significance of Buffon and Guéneau de Montbeillard’s Histoire naturelle des oiseaux ([1765]-1783) in the taxonomy of birds: Presentation and correspondence between Buffon’s “eagles” and the species acknowledged by Linnaeus, Brisson, and Gmelin
Zoosystema 46
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Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon and his collaborator Philibert Guéneau de Montbeillard (hereafter Guéneau), published a monumental nine-volume Histoire naturelle des oiseaux (“Natural history of birds”) from 1771 to 1783, as a part of a more general, unfinished project of a complete description of nature. It was the most exhaustive work on birds of its time, dealing with all the species then known, and describing a lot of new species present, among others, in the rich collection of the Cabinet royal (the institution renamed “Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle” in 1793).