A portrait of William MacGillivray

Abstract

William MacGillivray (1796-1852) is perhaps best remembered for his five-volume work The history ofBritish birds published between 1836 and 1852, and for his collaboration with John James Audubon in the preparation of the latter's Ornithological biographies, the letterpress published between 1831 and 1839 to accompany The birds ofAmerica. The only known likeness of MacGillivray was first published as a woodcut, along with another of his eldest son John, in A vertebrate fauna of the Outer Hebrides by J. A Harvie-Brown and T. E. Buckley (1888). The same woodcut appeared in an account of the lives of MacGillivray and the contemporary ornithologist William Yarrell (1784-1853) by Mullens (1909), with an acknowledgement to Harvie-Brown and Buckley. It was used again in an article about MacGillivray by Dewar (1953) and in a history of the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (Tansey and Mekie, 1982): MacGillivray was Conservator of the museum from 1831 to 1841.