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book as we have it now in our hands, in the local journal, is enough to show that 

 he never wished to issue as original that which only others had seen. Every 

 paper, as it was printed in the Hereford Times, he kindly sent to me, on the 

 printers' galley -slips ; and many a laugh we have had over the feebleness of some 

 of his poetical quotations : of which more anon. It seems to me that nothing can 

 be more ungenerous than for anyone to come forward now and say that what Dr. 

 Bull states they alone said, when he cannot, in his charming, genial way, ascribe 

 everything related in his book to the actual observer. The book is fat enough, 

 and full enough of personal references, in all conscience, to satisfy the pride of the 

 numerous observers to whom he refers. I feel sure that every member of the 

 Woolhope Club is grateful to its moving spirit for everything which he has done ; 

 and that no one can conscientiously follow in Dr. Bull's footsteps without realising 

 how he has cleared the way for them. It would, indeed, be a disheartening pros- 

 pect if the faunist of even a single county had left nothing for his successors to 

 notice and record. That which we wish to signalise to-night is that our dear 

 friend has made an epoch, by his being the first to publish in a self-standing 

 volume— as the Germans say — every item regarding the birds of Herefordshire 

 which his opportunities enabled him to collect together ; and that he would have 

 been the first to desire to ascribe individually to all every single fact which has 

 gone to make his book what it is. How he could have done much more I, as an old 

 litterateur, am at a loss to suggest. Upon his title-page, which he himself indited, 

 he renounces his individuality, and expresses his indebtedness to all our confreres. 



But enough of this. Let us try to get into the atmosphere where our dear 

 master felt at home. In the first place, let me laugh again at his poetical allusions. 

 Evidently birds do not lend themselves to poetry, save in a few instances. If they 

 had, his pages had been richer. Poets seem to think that skylarks and nightin- 

 gales, eagles and ravens, and such like, are the only birds worthy of their thoughts 

 — sweet although so many of their thoughts on them have been. To the humble 

 poetaster they leave the story of how the chaffinch weaves her marvellous nest, 

 and how the bottle-tit casts her into the shade for ingenuity. The masonry of the 

 song-thrush is as unsung as the heroes before Agamemnon. No poet of the first 

 rank ever saw the wondrous construction of a Carrion Crow's, or even of a Rook's 

 nest. None was ever carried away by the life in the eyes of a summer warbler 

 hiding in the tangled hedge. How a naturalist's heart beats when he thinks what 

 it all meant to him — when he last saw it ! But all that they, poets and poetasters, 

 have seen and recorded — so far as they thought was worth recording, and that is 

 often little — enlightens, and delights us, in Dr. Bull's pages. He leaned towards 

 local describers with a loving care, as if he and they alike had loved the same 

 things, but that each realised that it was beyond the power of either to show in 

 perfectly fitting words what each one evidently felt. And so it must be, always. 

 One man thinks that there can be no such bliss as that of being kept awake by the 

 singing of nightingales— and of such am I ; while another, who has gone through 

 what he appraises as the torture, curses their insistence. 



Herefordshire is not, at the first blush, a county in which we should expect 

 much strange Ijird-life. It has not the advantage, like Cornwall, of drawing to its 



