A natural history of water birds
By: thirty-four engravings on wood
Contributors: Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de, 1707-1788; Nicholson, Isaac, 1789-1848; Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de, 1707-1788; Davison, William, 1780-1858, printer
Publisher: Printed and sold wholesale and retail, by W. Davison
Published: 1819
Place of publication: Alnwick
Language: eng
Number of pages: 36
Subjects: Birds; Juvenile literature; Natural history; Chapbooks; Specimens
Notes: Watermark dated 1816 on UCLA copy.

Title vignette.

Vignettes on front and back covers.

An abridgment from The system of natural history by M. de Buffon (Alnwick : Davison, 1814), with illustrations by T. Bewick. Cf. Hugo, T. Bewick, (283) note.

First sentence: "The bittern is less than the heron, and is neither so voracious nor destructive."

One of 7 chapbooks issued by Davison as an abridgement of Buffon's "System of natural history," an itself abridged English translation of his "Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière": Davison, 1814; the chapbooks dated by Tattersfield "around 1819."

The woodcuts have been attributed to Thomas Bewick and his workshop by Hugo (in Bewick collector, p. 109-110); Tattersfield claims nothing in the chapbooks to be by Bewick (in Thomas Bewick, v. 2, p. 935) naming as the probable engraver Isaac Nicholson, a former Bewick apprentice.

The 7 chapbooks sometimes issued together under title: A cabinet of natural history.

Hugo, T. Bewick, 288