 Yarrell broadly follows the lead of Bewick in describing each species in a separate section, with essentially no introduction. The first bird, the Egyptian vulture, is preceded by nothing more than the Index (there is no table of contents) and the heading "British Birds", though there is an introductory paragraph on page 2, inside the Egyptian vulture article. Like Bewick, Yarrell's sections begin with a large wood engraving, depicting the species against a more or less realistic background: that of the Egyptian vulture shows a pyramid and a pair of laden camels. An immediate difference from Bewick is the list of Latin names that follows, with Vultur percnopterus (Bewick), Neophron percnopterus (Selby, Jenyns, Eyton, and Gould), and Cathartes percnopterus (Temminck). This care reflects both the rapidly advancing state of ornithology in the early nineteenth century, and Yarrell's more scientific approach.
