Project Gutenberg 40,000th eBook Milestone!

by Michael Cook on July 8, 2012
PG News

Extinct Birds by Walter Rothschild

With little fanfare, Project Gutenberg reached #40000 in its eBook series; Extinct Birds: an attempt to unite in one volume a short account of those birds which have become extinct in historical times: that is, within the last six or seven hundred years: to which are added a few which still exist, but are on the verge of extinction, by Walter Rothschild.

From Wikipedia: Extinct Birds covers globally extinct and rare birds as well as hypothetical extinct species which include bird taxa which existence are only based on written or oral reports or on paintings. The accounts of the extinct bird taxa are based on Rothschild’s lecture On extinct and vanishing birds published in the Proceedings of the 4th International Ornithological Congress 1905 in London.

There were only 300 copies published in 1907 (Hutchinson and Co., London) and each contains 45 paintings and 4 b/w sketches, by John Gerrard Keulemans, George Edward Lodge, Henrik Grönvold, Frederick William Frohawk, and Joseph Smit. Each copy of Extinct Birds was personally signed by Rothschild himself.

Extinct Birds, by Walter Rothschild                                      40000
 [Subtitle: An attempt to unite in one volume a short account
  of those Birds which have become extinct in historical times.]

Extinct Birds was produced by Chris Curnow, Keith Edkins and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at www.pgdp.net, utilizing images generously made available by The Internet Archive.

Download the book from www.gutenberg.org/etext/40000

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