1S76.] MS. " ILLUSTEATIONS OF INDIAN OENITHOLOGT." 423 



' Proceedings ' of the Asiatic Society of Bengal*. Being gifted with a ready pencil and a facile 



brush, Colonel Tickell, in some instances, made coloured drawings of the animals he secured ; 



and in the course of time he had accumulated many drawings, together with copious notes 



relating to the species he had captured or observed. Some of his first efforts were lost, including 



several sketches without which, it is to be feared, one or two of his earlier species must temain 



unidentified. A part of the materials he brought to England were thrown together, and form 



the work to which I now propose to call attention. The original intention seems to have been liiis, ]876, 



to make his proposed work a complete history of Indian ornithology; but illness and other P-^"^'- 



circumstances prevented this laudable object from being attained ; consequently the GalUnacece, 



the Gtallce, the Anseres, and, among the Insessores, the Sylmidm, the Par idee and kindred genera, 



and the Conirostres are wholly wanting f. 



The work consists of seven small folio volumes, the titlepage of each being printed, while 

 the whole of the letterpress is most neatly written by hand. The characters of the orders, 

 families, and genera Colonel Tickell adopts are given in detail ; and each genus is illustrated by 

 accurately drawn outlines showing, in most instances, the bill, feet, and wing-structure. These 

 outlines are drawn with the very greatest care, and in each case to scale, and not by eye alone. 

 Every species personally known to the author is figured ; and many of the plates are works of art. 

 It may be affirmed that nearly all are good, and that many are almost perfection. AVhile the 

 ornithological characters of nearly every species are accurately rendered, the attitude of each 

 bird discloses how well Colonel Tickell observed and how closely he studied nature. The 

 attractiveness of the plates is moreover much enhanced by the backgrounds in which the figures 

 are set. A knowledge of the haunts and habits of each species can almost be acquired by 

 studying the accessories of each figure. Every plate is a highly finished landscape, true to 

 nature, often enlivened by scenes from every-day life in India, either in the plains or in the 

 jungle, in town or in cantonments. After the monotonous uniformity of the conventional back- 

 grounds of illustrated English ornithological works, it is a relief and a pleasure to find every lUis, 1876, 

 bird surrounded by real leaves, pecking at real flowers, or climbing real trees, or with real ^' ^^^' 

 Indian buildings and Indian animals in the distance. The drawing of Milmis govinda sitting 

 on the cornice of a town house, that of Ilirundo javanica clinging to its nest under the eaves of 

 an up-country bungalow, or that of Ilinmdo erijthropygia skimming over the marsh where a 

 sportsman has just dropped a Snipe, startling the black buffaloes in the foreground, may be 

 cited, at random, as instances of the artist's art. But as if his beautiful drawings were not a 

 sufficient adornment to the work. Colonel Tickell has appended to most of the pages descriptive 

 of the genera small oval vignettes, done in Indian ink, illustrating the customs and ways of the 

 people, the incidents of an Indian officer's life in quarters, in camp, and on the march, out 



* Not always. Conf. Tickell, Ibis, 1803, p. 111. 



t "While this paper was passing through the press I was favoured by General Boyd and the Eev. E. A. Tiokell with 

 an opportunity of examining all the original drawings and notes in their possession from which Colonel Tickell elaborated 

 the more complete work under notice. They are bound up in two foho and three quarto volumes, and comprise notices 

 and coloured drawings of many more species than are to be found in the Zoological Society's copy, many of them relating 

 to birds belonging to the orders and families there omitted. I have not had time to thoroughly examine these volumes, 

 but a cursory inspection has satisfied me that an account of their contents may be of use and interest to ornithologists. 



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