The plates, particulary the 114 of birds, are very fine. As the author notes in the preface 'A cursory survey of the plates will, I think, convince anyone that they are the production of a master's hand - a hand that depicts nature so closely as to render the representation nearly, if not equally, as valuable as the actual specimen'

Sir Thomas Maclear (1794-1879) was a friend of Sir John Herschel and David Livingstone (whom he taught to use a sextant), and an important member of the scientific community in South Africa, where he served as Astronomer Royal at the Cape of Good Hope from 1833 to 1870