The Ornithology of Australia comprises three volumes (of an uncompleted set) of lithographed, hand-coloured, illustrations of Australian birds with accompanying text. It was authored by Silvester Diggles of Brisbane and was originally issued in 21 parts, each part containing six plates (126 plates in all) with short descriptive letterpress, in imperial quarto format, with the leaves of the plates 39 cm in height. The parts were printed for the author by T.P. Pugh. Altogether, between 1863 and 1875, Diggles, with his niece Rowena Birkett who hand-coloured each plate, produced 325 plates illustrating some 600 Australian birds.