192 JOTTINGS ABOUT BIRDS. 



results. As a rule, artists are keen observers, and 

 once let them be made to feel the want of a greater 

 variety in their bird subjects, and we shall quickly 

 reach a higher standard of accuracy. A man cannot 

 paint bird-life with the touch of a master without 

 giving to the birds careful observation, and with that 

 observation a practically limitless field of artistic 

 work will be opened out. We have a right to 

 demand and expect accuracy cf detail from artists 

 who presume to place on their canvas any of 

 Nature's beautiful and fauldess handiwork. 



Now let us leave the few stereotyped " painters' 

 birds" and glance at some of the species that the 

 artists have so long and so unaccountably neg- 

 lected. We will commence with those that should 

 belong to the marine painter. Among all the 

 varied phases of bird-life, there are no birds more 

 effective when introduced into a picture than those 

 to be found on the shore. What more strikingly 

 beautiful, for instance, than a flock of Terns sport- 

 ing fairy-like above a dark-green sea? Aptly indeed 

 have they been named the Swallows of the deep — 

 they live almost in the air, and must be classed 

 among the most graceful of birds. A dozen species 

 are classed as British, but out of these not more 

 than four are common in British seas. All these 



