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when an occurrence of such a doubtful species as the Great Black Wood- 

 pecker in Britain is noted ; and in such a case the world must needs 

 be told upon whom the responsibility of the observation rests. A simple 

 on dit is so much waste of type. And even when Dr. Bull has given his 

 authority, and that of a name well-known to us, some critics carp at it, and make 

 merry — over their own ignorance. The case I refer to is where Mr. Clement Ley 

 states (p. 97) that he " has known as many as forty eggs taken one by one from a 

 single nest of the Wryneck." The wise critic does not know, what every egg- 

 collector knows, that the Wryneck is one of those birds whose power of enumera- 

 tion is a kind of craze. You have only to take out, day by day, the egg regularly 

 laid after the first, and poor Mrs. Wryneck goes on trying to complete the tale 

 (seven or eight being her usual number) until her powers of oviposition are 

 exhausted ; she is never satisfied that she has laid the proper number of eggs, 

 unless she has them there to count, until her fecundity fails her. It is, of course, 

 to this peculiarity that Mr. Ley refers ; he knew so much that he never thought 

 how many people, wise in their own conceit, know so little. But we may take 

 some comfort, on the other hand, that not one alone of Dr. Bull's critics has com- 

 plained that he has quoted too much. He never professed to be a second Gilbert 

 White. Happier would he have been if he had not had to repeat so much at 

 second hand, and had had himself the delight of observing everything which he 

 chronicled so lovingly. He is a poor naturalist who is content with knowing and 

 recording nothing but what his own eyes have seen ; just as he is a dishonest one 

 who says, in so many words, with whatever circumlocution, that the original 

 observations of others were his own. The " I " of conversation, and the " we " of 

 literature, are alike conspicuously absent from Dr. Bull's posthumous "Notes." 

 To himself he arrogates nothing but the piecing and the padding. If no one of us 

 ever takes pleasure in any occupation on a lower ethical basis than this, we shall 

 not do much harm in this world, nor have much to answer for in the next. 



But now I must delay you no longer. Let me, however, express one 

 fervent wish. Rise in the morning filled with an honest desire to correct, so far 

 as each of you can, whatever Dr Bull has stated amiss. Gather facts together so 

 fast, and so well authenticated as to make a third avifaunist of Herefordshire an 

 impossibility in our generation. You cannot please him better, if his ghost still 

 revisits the places which beloved so much, and where he was loved so well. He was 

 your pioneer, although he never held himself more than your recorder, to make 

 the way easier for those who should come after him. Had he been longer spared 

 to us, and had he had the opportunity of showing his work to those who had 

 enriched it, before its final stage, there is no one who would have taken greater 

 pleasure in recording, for the sake of posterity, as well as in justice to those 

 whose observations he collected together with a childlike inoffensiveness, how 

 much he was indebted to those whose love of bird-life, and of all life, was akin to 

 his own. If I could have the opportunity, in any arraignment, of appearing as 

 his counsel, I think I could show to those-who failed to understand him, whatever 

 they might adduce, that our friend Dr. Bull was as honest and straightforward a 

 naturalist as it has ever been the glory of Great Britain to foster and admire. 



