TO THE READER 



These short essays on birds have been written with some 

 trepidation ; for, in truth, the more the bird admirer studies 

 and reads the best to be had on the subject, the more he 

 becomes convinced that nearly everything has been said 

 that there is to say upon the habits of British birds ; and 

 he will admire in particular the genius of Macgillivray — the 

 best open-air registrar Britain has had — the great powers 

 of observation and love of sport of the late Mr. Booth and 

 of Sir Ralph Payne-Galway, and the compilation, with its 

 literary flavour, of Mr. Seebohm. 



After studying the works of these men, he will ask him- 

 self if any habits have been overlooked — if there is any- 

 thing 7ieiv to record — and he will answer, "Very little;" 

 but still he will allow that a note may be added here and 

 there, and a few suggestions given as to characters and 

 aesthetic worth ; for those aesthetic appraisers — the poets — 

 have, as a rule, written the thing they know not. 



But when the student of wild-birds comes to look on the 

 barbarous and grotesque plates in these books, his heart is 

 sore, and he sighs for an English Hokusai. He may dwell 

 upon the technical triumph, qua engraver, of Bewick ; but 

 he recognises immediately, as can any unlettered wild- 

 fowler, that Bewick's birds, as birds, are all caricatures. The 

 monstrous and gaudy decorations of Selby, Gould, Dresser, 

 and the illustrations to Booth's Rough Notes make him gasp 

 for breath ; while any marshman can point out the glaring 

 errors of the meretricious and false woodcuts illustrating 

 Yarrell and Saunders. These illustrations to the various 

 editions of British birds only convince me that a master 

 artist has never yet done English birds. There is not a 



