In addition to being widely recognized as the “founding father of paleontology,” Georges Léopold Chrétien Dagobert Frédéric Cuvier (1769-1832) was well schooled in zoology, anatomy, and taxonomy. In 1813, Cuvier completed his Essay on the Theory of the Earth in which Cuvier was the first to prove that it was possible for species to become extinct. Cuvier also believed strongly in the immutability of species and was critical of the writings of Constantine Samuel Rafinesque (1783-1840, Georges-Louis Leclerc (1707-1788), Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829), Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1722-1844), and others that were developing the theory of evolution.
When William Swainson (1789-1855) and John James Audubon met Georges Cuvier in Paris, France, on September 1, 1828, Cuvier was familiar with Swainson through his published writings. Knowing nothing about John James Audubon, it helped that Audubon spoke perfect French. Also catching Cuvier off guard was the stunning drawings of birds that Audubon presented, including one named Cuvier’s Regulus. Audubon felled and drew Cuvier’s Regulus on June 8, 1812, while visiting his wife’s family farm in Pennsylvania that they called Fatland Ford. “The drawing which I then made I kept for a long time without having described the bird from which it was taken.” Audubon admitted, “It might, however, be very easily mistaken for the Ruby-crowned Kinglet, the manners of which appear to be much the same.” For the later octavo edition of Birds of America, Audubon changed the name of Cuvier’s Regulus to Cuvier’s Kinglet. The spectacular Mountain laurel flowers among which Cuvier’s Kinglet appears in Birds of America can still very much be seen in the higher elevations of Pennsylvania. Cuvier’s Kinglet is a different matter. The only record of the bird remains the one recorded by Audubon. Despite the debates that surround some of the bird identification in Birds of America, Cuvier complimented the work as “the most magnificent monument which has yet been made to ornithology.”
On September 22, 1828, George Cuvier sent a letter of review to the Royal Academy of Science regarding the Birds of America. “The execution of these plates, so remarkable for their size, seems to us equally successful in the drawing, the engraving, and coloring, and though it may be difficult to represent relief in a colored print with as much effect as in painting proper, this is no disadvantage in works on natural history; naturalists prefer the true color of objects to those accidental shades which result from the diverse inflections of light; necessary though these be for completing the truth of a picture, they are foreign as well as prejudicial to scientific accuracy.”
If the glowing review from Georges Cuvier attracted only two new subscribers to Birds of America, few names could have been more prominent than King Charles X (1757-1836) of France and Louis Philippe III (1773-1850), the Duke of Orléans.