36 



Bird Notes and News 



newspaper word-feuds of 1913-4 and 

 1920-21. With the same sickness of 

 heart he saw the bird-catcher still 

 devastating the country side with net 

 and lime, the wild bird — the very ex- 

 pression of aerial motion and hberty — 

 still wearing out. Jits hfe behind cage- 

 bars, keeper .^nd gardener continuing 

 to trap and shoot without sense or mercy, 

 and the collector grown not less but more 

 of a menace to the existence of the rare 

 British birds. The hope to which he 

 clung, more than to legislation, more 

 than to any appeal to grown man or 

 woman, was the education of the children, 

 the formation through school influences 

 of a better and truer relationship between 

 boys and girls, and the httle feathered 

 people round about them ; the impress 

 of sympathy and love on the malleable 

 nature of youth ; and the consequent 

 wearing down of ignorance and cruelty. 

 It was as arrows in the hands of a giant, 

 to this end, that he saw the possibihties 

 of the Society's Bird and Tree work 

 in the schools. So great was his faith 

 in it that he had this year made over to 

 the Society the sum of £1,000, to be 

 used solely in the extension and working 

 of the scheme. 



Born on an estancia on the pampas 

 of Argentina, " in a house quaintly known 

 as ' The Twenty -four Ombu Trees,'" Mr. 

 Hudson has told something of the story 

 of his early life and his inborn passion for 

 Nature, in the strange and fascinating 

 autobiography, " Far Away and Long 

 Ago" (1918). His father was EngUsh, 

 his mother belonged to a New England 

 family. Life in the wild land was full 

 of interest, excitement, and adventure ; 

 to the genius of the boy the limitless 

 plains of La Plata were a very land of 

 wonder and delight, recalled with extra- 

 ordinary vividness half a century after- 

 wards during convalescence in a sick- 

 room m Cornwall. The narrative, how- 

 ever, is brought down only to the tragedy 

 of his sixteenth year, when acute 



rheumatic fever, following after an attack 

 of typhus, left heart trouble which he 

 was then assured would allow him only a 

 few short years of life. The doctors were 

 wrong ; but the verdict brought to an 

 end youth's untroubled joy in existence, 

 and turned thought to introspective 

 questionings. 



Further than this the pubUc has never 

 been taken into confidence. A reticent 

 man, with no desire for company or 

 social hfe, and with a small circle of 

 intimate friends, Mr. Hudson had scant 

 toleration for the publication of private 

 concerns, and a deep detestation of 

 " hterary ghouls " who might rake over 

 his papers after his death. All that 

 the world needed to know was in his 

 books. Coming to England, a young 

 hterary aspirant, in the seventies, he 

 became first known to the critics as 

 writer of a romance of love and war in 

 Uruguay, " The Purple Land," and to 

 naturalists by the " Argentine Ornith- 

 ology" (1889), which was sponsored by 

 the late Dr. W. L. Sclater, who supplied 

 the more strictly scientific portion. Such 

 works of note were varied, for the boiling 

 of the slender pot, by a certain amount 

 of magazine writing and fiction, much 

 of which is lost ; but neither his taste 

 nor his style lent itself to rapid pro- 

 duction or popular favour. " Green 

 Mansions " (1904) owes its fascination 

 to a rare poetry of language and exquisite 

 beauty of description rather than to 

 the supremely imaginative and tragic 

 story. " A (IJrystal Age " pictures an 

 Arcadia too unhuman to appeal ; the 

 wild and weird short stories contained 

 in "El Ombu " indicate what the author 

 might have done if (unhappily, as bird- 

 lovers would say) he had trained his 

 genius to fiction. But it is on the 

 successive Nature books that his fame 

 will rest. " The Naturahst in La Plata " 

 (1892) was followed by his first essay 

 in the Hfe of the Enghsh country, though 

 by this time he knew it well — " Birds 

 in a Village " ; and then came " Idle 

 Days in Patagonia " (1893), " British 

 Birds " (1895), " Birds in London " (1899), 



