Featured on PDR in the collection John Gould’s Mammals of Australia (1845–63)

In 1838, the English ornithologist John Gould set sail for Australia with his wife, the artist Elizabeth Gould. The previous year John had examined the bird specimens Charles Darwin brought back from the second voyage of the Beagle, bringing his deep knowledge and patient attention to bear on the unfamiliar bodies of mockingbirds and finches from South America and the Galápagos. His discovery that what Darwin had believed to be blackbirds and “gross-bills” were in fact finches would turn out to be integral to the theory of evolution.