Recent Ornithological Publications. 291 



burn's work *. Alas ! there is no necessity to extend our researches 

 into the strange forms described by Le Vaillant^ those modern 

 representatives of the Griffons and Martlets of antiquity, so quietly 

 recapitulated by Mr. Gray with the dry interrogatory, '' Nonne avis 

 arteficta}" Nor need we go to the amusing specimen lately laid 

 on the table of the Zoological Society — a common Nightjar's tail 

 united to the body and appendages of Macrodipteryx africanus ; 

 nor to such an instance as the writer observed the other day in 

 a local museum of some repute, of a Bird of Paradise whose feet, 

 lost in action, had been judiciously replaced by a stout pair of 

 Jackdaw's legs. One need only turn over page after page of 

 any of the so-called " popular " works on natural history, such 

 as Cassell's, or even the more carefully illustrated, if not more 

 carefully compiled, serial of Mr. Wood, published by Routledge, 

 to see a vast collection of imaginary shapes and forms, copied 

 from portions of skins and feathers that have been stretched and 

 puckered over a hideously distorted "dummy" — the triumphant 

 conceptions of the deputy subcurator of some borough museum. 

 Remonstrate with the artist who earns his 16s. per week by such 

 labours in natural history, and he will reply, " I saw it so in the 

 British IMuseum ! " We may shrug our shoulders, but we dare 

 not contradict his assertion. It has indeed always been a 

 mystery to us, if we do not entrust the restoration of the 

 Chapter House of Westminster to the tender mercies of the 

 churchwardens of St. Margaret's for the time being, nor to the 

 reconstructive ingenuity of the cheapest local contractor, why 

 the spirit of parsimony should have handed over the recon- 

 struction of the most lovely and graceful forms, not of art but 

 of nature, to the ignorance of a journeyman labourer who never 

 saw either the species nor any of its congeners in life, and who 

 has not the remotest idea of its habits or character. In every 

 museum stand gaunt rows of hideous scarecrows to mislead for 

 years the young, and to disgust the naturalist. We see the fruits 

 in our popular works. Spirited as are many of the woodcuts-in 

 Wood's ' Natural History,' yet when the artist has not had the 

 advantage of a lesson from a living specimen in the glorious 

 gardens of the Zoological Society, his shapes are indeed " fear- 

 * ' Birds drawn from Nature.' By Mrs. Hugh Blackburn. 



