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Bird Notes and News 



is inscribed), referred to their mutual 

 love for and associations with the Argen- 

 tine, and said that he had seen the 

 Argentine Minister before his recent 

 departure for South America with regard 

 to the memorialising of one of the greatest 

 sons of that country in the land of his 

 birth ; and that he had promised to go 

 out to Buenos Aires and dedicate such a 

 memorial in due course. 



After some discussion, and various 

 suggestions, it was agreed that the 

 Memorial should take the form of a 

 drinking and bathing fountain for wild 

 birds, to be erected if possible in 

 association with a " Hudson Bird 

 Sanctuary " in one of the London Parks. 

 A proposition that a bust of Mr. Hudson 

 should be presented to the National 

 Portrait Gallery was negatived by the 

 statement of Mr. Edmund Gosse (one 

 of the Trustees) that no posthumous 

 portrait was ever accepted ; and it was 

 then agreed that the portrait by Professor 

 W. Rothenstein be acquired and offered 

 to the Trustees of the Gallery, and that 

 any further sum subscribed should be 

 devoted to increasing the fund entrusted 

 by his will to the Royal Society for the 

 Protection of Birds, for the education of 

 children. Lord Grey spoke of Mr. Hud- 

 son's very earnest desire for the further- 

 ance of this work as the most hopeful 

 and the most essential means of creating 

 and increasing that love for birds which 

 would lead to their better protection in 

 the years to come. 



Professor Rothenstein has since most 

 generously offered his painting to the 

 Committee as a free gift, which the 

 Chairman has gratefully accepted on 

 their behalf. 



The following have been elected as an 

 Executive Committee with power to add 

 to their number, for the carrying out of 

 the proposals : Mr. Cunninghame Graham 

 (Chairman), Viscountess Grey, Mr. Muir- 

 head Bone, Mr. J. M. Dent, Mr. Gerald 

 Duckworth, Miss Linda Gardiner, Mr. 

 Edward Garnett, Mr. Holbrook Jackson, 

 Mrs. R. McKenna, Mr. H. J. Massingham ; 

 Mr. Hugh Dent, Hon. Treasurer, and Mrs. 

 Frank E. Lemon, Hon. Secretary. 



Proposed Bird Fountain 

 Mr. Cunninghame Graham writes to the 



Times (December 11th) : 



" Your readers have already been acquainted 

 with the suggestion to commemorate the name 

 and work of the late Mr. W. H. Hudson by a 

 memorial in keeping with the peculiar quality 

 of his genius. At a meeting attended by a 

 number of his literary friends, preference was 

 given, as has been reported, to the proposal to 

 erect, in connec ion, if possible, with a ' Hudson 

 Bird Sanctuary ' in one of the Royal Parks, 

 a symbolic representation in stone or marble, 

 which should bear a medallion of him, and 

 should also serve as a drinking and bathing 

 place for the wild birds he loved so well. 



" It would be impossible to commemorate 

 such a man as Mr. Hudson within four walls, 

 impossible to recall Lis happiest work, his 

 deepest teaching, his sweetest days, without 

 reference to those beings ' of all living things 

 made most lovely,' the sight of which, as he 

 has told us, best medicined his tired vision and 

 whose music best restored to vigour his weary 

 brain. 



" The association with a London park might 

 seem less appropriate than some cairn on a 

 downland height, or some finely wrought well- 

 head in a hidden village of Wiltshire or Somer- 

 set ; but no special association linked his life 

 with any one of the quiet green places of which 

 he wrote. It was, after all, in the crowded 

 capital of the Empire that Mr. Hudson for over 

 thirty years had his permanent home ; among 

 London's bricks and mortar that he died ; 

 and it was from his pen — the pen that wrote 

 of vast pampas and wide downs and deep 

 country lanes, the pen of the mystic and the 

 poet — that there came the first plea for the 

 bird sanctuaries of the London parks. It was 

 his vision that first perceived in the Londoner's 

 soul the longing for a sight and sound of wild 

 birds even before tulips and geraniums — ' the 

 perpetual hunger of the heart and craving of 

 those who are compelled to live apart from 

 Nature . . . and the refreshment they ex- 

 perience at the sight of trees and grass and 

 water, and, above everything, of wild and glad 

 animal life.' "What Mr. Hudson saw a quarter 

 of a century ago has at last been seen by a 

 Government Department, and it is surely well 

 that his vision and his wish should be recalled 

 by the thousands who resort to our great 

 parks and the thousands who will make the 

 pilgrimage to the memorial. 



' It is worth recalling that he placed the 

 opening of his first book on English bird life 



