8,0 Mr. H. J. Elwes on Beebe's [Ibis, 



IV. — A note on Capt. Beebe's Monograph of the Pheasants. 

 By H. J. Elwes, F.R.S., M.B.O.U. 



A WORK of this importance deserves a more extended notice 

 than that given in the last number of 'The Ibis' (1918, 

 p. 726), and as I have always been specially attracted 

 by these splendid birds and have personal knowledge of 

 many of them in their native haunts, I hope the following 

 remarks may be found of interest. 



It is, perhaps, a question which future authors and pub- 

 lishers would do well to consider, whether monographs so 

 beautifully and artistically illustrated as this book, and 

 which can only be published at an expense which most 

 private ornithologists cannot afford, are desirable in the 

 interests of science. Many of those who are wealthy enough 

 to purchase such works are not ornithologists, and buy them 

 for their illustrations only ; many to whom the letterpress 

 would be of permanent interest and value cannot afford to 

 acquire the work. A second edition without the plates, 

 or with the plates in a much cheaper form, cannot be pro- 

 duced with justice to the subscribers and purchasers of the 

 original edition until that is completely sold out, which may 

 not be for many years to come ; but if the publishers had 

 printed the letterpress in an octavo or quarto form and sold 

 the illustrations as a separate volume, my own experience 

 makes me think that they would, from a business point of 

 view, have been equally well repaid ; whilst a much larger 

 edition of the letterpress might have been produced and 

 sold with great advantage to the ornithological world. 



I must congratulate Captain Beebe on the way in which, 

 when he had determined on his monograph, he started on a 

 hmg journey to some of the most remote parts of Asia with 

 the object of seeing for himself in nature as many as possible 

 of the birds, which the monographer of the past was content 

 to study in museums only ; and though this personal know- 

 ledge has, perhaps, led him to attach importance in some 

 cases to more minute and possibly variable characters than 

 he would otherwise have done, yet, as these questions of 



