Department: Ruskin

This is a plate from 'Birds of Australia', a seven-volume book published between 1837-1848, with further parts being published until 1869. It contained almost 800 plates depicting every species of bird known in Australia at that time, and cost subscribers £115, a vast sum to buy in completion. Subscribers received each plate separately and could only have their plates bound into books once they had received the index and introduction with the last of the plates. Gould wrote the text and helped produce most of the initial illustrations, whilst his wife Elizabeth, and for the most part Henry Richter carried out the lithography for the finished plates. While Gould was in Australia, he discovered the budgerigar and later introduced it as a pet to Britain. This bird’s common name is ‘Robust White-eye’. Known to live only on Lord Howe Island, to the east of Australia, it has been extinct since at least 1923.