Does anyone have a scan of Johann Karl Wilhelm Illiger’s Prodromus systematis et mammalium avium (1811), or at least the introductory section? It appears that Illiger is the one who introduced the rank of family to the Linnean system, and I’d like to find out more.
Late note: Thanks to reader Veronica Abbass, I have the link. It wasn’t visible from Australia for some strange reason. And as far as I can make out the Latin in the Lectori, he introduces family on page x as necessary because there are too many genera to group into orders.
There is a copy of the book in German at
http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/3602540
Thanks Veronica, but I have to pay for that version. And Gallica lacks a copy.
It’s a dual German/Latin edition, by the way.
Try
http://books.google.com/
It doesn’t help in this case, but if you’re not already aware of http://www.biolib.de it’s worth you taking a note.
Internet Archive has a 1800 book by Illiger. Apparently so does Google Books, but it’s one of those ones that don’t come up on searches. (I don’t know why – are some books restricted to US readers?)