Systematic notes on Asian birds. 27. On the dates of publication of John Gould’s “A Century of Birds from the Himalaya Mountains”

John Gould’s “A Century of Birds from the Himalaya Mountains” (1830-1833), one of the first works to illustrate birds from the Indian subcontinent, has had a confused publication history. New information in Gould’s correspondence and contemporary reviews has enabled the timing of publication of the separate parts to be determined. Gould’s work was intended to illustrate new birds described in a series of six papers by Nicholas Vigors in the “Proceedings of the Committee of Science and Correspondence of the Zoological Society of London” (1831-1832). Although Vigors’s papers are usually accepted as the source of the 73 new names, 26 were first published in Gould’s work.