Between 1776 and 1785 Miller published 60 hand-coloured engravings in his Icones animalium et plantarum or Various subjects of Natural History, wherein are delineated Birds, Animals and many curious Plants, &c. Very few copies of this work survive.[4] The plates include binomial names, some of which contain the oldest published specific epithet and therefore have priority over later scientific names. There are seven species of bird for which Miller's plate is the holotype; these include the king penguin, the secretarybird, the crested caracara and the extinct Tahiti crake.[5]
The plates were re-issued in 1796 with text supplied by George Shaw under a new title: Cimelia Physica or Figures of rare and curious quadrupeds, birds, &c. together with several of the most elegant plants.[6]
Miller, John Frederick Miller; Shaw, George (1796). Cimelia Physica. Figures of rare and curious guadrupeds, birds, etc., together with several of the most elegant plants engraved & coloured, from the subjects themselves. London: Printed by T. Bensley for Benjamin and John White, Horace's Head, Fleet-Street, and John Sewell, Cornhill. OCLC642452311.
References
^"Miller, James (fl. 1770s)". biography. Australian National Herbarium. 13 November 2007. Retrieved 5 July 2009.
^Walters, Michael (2009). "The identity of the birds depicted in Shaw and Miller's Cimelia physica". Archives of Natural History. 36 (2): 316–326. doi:10.3366/E0260954109001016.