The Birds of Australia (Mathews)

It was sponsored and authored by wealthy Australian amateur ornithologist Gregory Mathews, with considerable assistance from his collaborator and private secretary Tom Iredale, and was published by H. F. & G. Witherby of London over a 17-year period from 1910 to 1927.

The text and plates, comprising 12 volumes, were issued serially in 75 parts in royal quarto format in an edition of 225 numbered copies.

In a review in the AOU journal The Auk, the editor Witmer Stone comments: "It is interesting in view of Mr Mathews's many discussions of nomenclature to see how his attitude on certain points changed as his work progressed.

In the opening volume he congratulates the authorities of the British Museum upon their intention of ignoring many of the "useless generic names" of the late Dr Bowdler Sharpe and yet in a few years we see Mr Mathews as one of the most extreme genus splitters that ornithology has known.

We have discussed Mr Mathews’ great work from a nomenclatural point of view because that seems to have been the author's chief concern in its production and that is the feature that will be remembered in the future.

[1] After completing the publication of the 12 volumes, in 1928 Mathews produced The Birds of Norfolk and Lord Howe Islands and the Australian South Polar Quadrant, in the same format and with the same publisher, containing 45 lithographic plates.