Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Jean Baptiste Audebert

AUDEBERT, JEAN BAPTISTE, a distinguished French naturalist and artist, was born at Rochefort in 1759. He studied painting and drawing at Paris, and gained con siderable reputation as a miniature painter. In 1787 he was employed to make drawings of some objects in a natural history collection, and was also a contributor in the preparation of the plates for Olivier s Histoire des Imectes. He thus acquired a taste for the study of natural history, and devoted himself with great eagerness to the new pursuit. In 1800 appeared his first original work, L Histoire Naturelle des Singes, des Maids, et des Galeopi- tkeques, illustrated by 62 folio plates, drawn and engraved by himself. The colouring in these plates was unusually beautiful, and was laid on by a method devised by the author himself. Audebert died in 1800, but he had left complete materials for another great work, Histoire des Colibris, des Oiseaux-Mouches, des Jacamares, et des Pro merops, which was published in 1802. 200 copies were printed in folio, 100 in large quarto, and 15 were printed with the whole text in letters of gold. Another work, left unfinished, was also published after the author s death, L ffi-stoire des Grimpereaux, et des Oiseaux de Paradis. The last two works also appeared together in two volumes with the title Oiseaux dores ou d, reflets metalliques, 1802.