Aldrovandi was the author/editor of the three-volume Ornithologia, of
which Buffon wrote, anachronistically, that 'by eliminating everything useless
or irrelevant to the subject, one could reduce it to a tenth of the original'
(quoted by Mayr, p.168). Mayr himself comments, no less anachronistically:
'the species ... were grouped into such totally artificial categories as birds
with hard beaks, birds that bathe in dust or in dust and water, those that sing
well, that are water birds, and so on - quite a caricature of a classification
...' (Mayr, p. 168)