Bird Notes and News 



117 



than fine him £20 with two guineas costs. 

 Defendant intimated that he would 

 appeal. 



(It will be remembered that the export 

 of plumage from India has been long 

 prohibited, and that Egrets are especially 

 valued in that country as insect-eating 

 protectors of the paddy and cotton crops.) 



PLUMAGE ORDER 

 By virtue of the Importation of 



Plumage (No. 2) Order, 1923, the Green 

 (or Japanese) Pheasant {Phasianus versi- 

 color) and the Copper Pheasant {Phasianus 

 soemmerringi) have been removed from 

 the Schedule to the Importation of 

 Plumage (Prohibition) Act, 1921. The 

 Order comes into force on January 1st, 

 and accordingly as from that date the 

 importation of the plumage of these 

 birds will not be permitted without 

 hcence. 



Books Received 



" Rare, Vanishing, and Lost British 

 Birds." Compiled from Notes by W H. 

 Hudson by Linda Gardiner. (J. M. Dent & 

 Sons, Ltd., 10s. 6d. net.) — The last work 

 from ]\Ir. Hudson's hand is contained in 

 the final chapter of A Hind in Richmond 

 Park and in this work on the lost and 

 menaced wild birds of Great Britain, 

 which has now been issued by Messrs. 

 Dent. It is a volume of historic value as 

 a record of the times and circumstances in 

 which some of the finest members of 

 Britain's avifauna have been lost to this 

 country, and as a revelation of the con- 

 ditions under which others still preserve 

 a slender thread of existence. What sort 

 of birds these were, and are, can be 

 judged from the twenty-five finely- 

 coloured plates prepared, under INIr. 

 Hudson's supervision, by Mr. H. Gronvold, 

 and admirably reproduced. They range 

 from the vanished Great Auk, extermi- 

 nated as a witch by quaking Scotchmen, 

 to the Bittern, shot every year on its 

 attempted return to this country except 

 in the one spot where once again it now 

 breeds, and the little Kentish Plover, 

 persecuted bj'- the " cursed collector " 

 and doomed but for the intervention 

 of the Royal Society for the Protection of 

 Birds. 



The story of the unfinished work and 

 its completion after I\Ir. Hudson's death 

 may be given from Miss Gardiner's 

 Foreword : — 



For some years before his death Mr. Hudson 

 had been anxious to prepare an enlarged edition 

 of the pamphlet Lost British Birds which he 



wrote in 1894 for the Society (now the Royal 

 Society) for the Protection of Birds. In the 

 midst of much other work, that he also hoped 

 to accomplish, held back by weariness and ill- 

 health, but constantly urged on by the sharpest 

 and saddest of all goads — the consciousness 

 that but little time remained to him for 

 the completion of any task — this book seemed 

 to be rarely absent from his thoughts. He 

 referred to it the last time I saw him, deploring 

 that the progress he had made was not greater 

 owing to his absence from his books during 

 the winter and spring spent in Cornwall, and 

 to his pre-occupation with A Hind in Riclwwnd 

 Park. He spoke then of the increased need 

 for such a book, and of the birds to be included 

 in it. 



The twenty-five birds in this book are fairly 

 typical. One of them is wholly extinct ; 

 others are entirely lost to Great Britain ; 

 others again exist in such small numbers as 

 to be unknown to all except the men who seek 

 them in small and scattered areas, and these 

 seekers are for the most part bent on further 

 reducing the number in order to add specimens 

 to private collections. 



The material for this work, beyond the 

 pamphlet of 1894, consisted of notes in pen 

 and pencil, contained in note-books and on 

 many loose sheets of paper. In a few cases 

 the matter was fairly complete ; in some, refer- 

 ences and extracts were indicated only ; in 

 others the notes were rough, disconnected, and 

 unfinished. IVIany were jotted down in an 

 abbreviated form and were extremely difl&cult 

 to decipher, even for those intimately acquainted 

 with the handwriting. In putting them to- 

 gether I have transcribed every note with 

 the greatest care, and every reference has been 

 looked up and completed. 



