THE BIRDS OF INDIA.« 



By Douglas Dewar. F. Z. S., I. C. S. 



Of the birds of India it may truly be said " their name is legion." 

 He who would treat of them in a short paper must perforce confine 

 himself to generalities. I therefore propose to devote the time at 

 my disposal, firstly, to a consideration of the general characteristics 

 of the avifauna of India, and then to pass on to some aspects of the 

 study of bird life. 



Literary critics seem to be agreed that we who write about Indian 

 birds form a definite school. " Phil Robinson," they say, " furnished 

 thirty years ago a charming model, which all who have followed 

 him seem compelled to copy more or less closely." Mr. W. H. Hudson 

 remarks : 



We grow used to look for funny books about animals from India just as we 

 look for sentimental natural history books from America. 



In a sense this criticism is well founded. Popular books on Indian 

 ornitholog}^ resemble one another in that a ripple of humor runs 

 through each. But the critics err when they attempt to explain this 

 similarity by asserting that Anglo-Indian writers model themselves, 

 consciously or unconsciously, on Phil Robinson, or that they imitate 

 one another. 



The mistake made by the critics is excusable. When each suc- 

 cessive writer discourses in the same peculiar style the obvious infer- 

 ence is that the later ones are guilty of more or less conscious pla- 

 giarism. But such an inference is drawn only by those who have not 

 enjoyed the advantage of meeting our Indian birds in the flesh. To 

 those who do possess this advantage it is clear that the birds them- 

 selves are responsible for our writing being funny. We naturalists 

 merely describe what we see. 



The avifauna of every country has a character of its own. Mr. 

 John Borroughs has remarked that American birds as a whole are 

 more gentle, more insipid than the feathered folk of the British Isles. 



» Reprinted by permission, with author's corrections, from Journal of the 

 Royal Society of Arts, London, No. 2927, Vol. LVII, December 25, 1908. 



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