April i i, 1901] 



NA TURE 



567 



THE WILDFOWL OF SCOTLAND} 



THE possession of artistic talents of the exceptionally 

 high order of those with which the author of the 

 l)eautiful volume before us is endowed confers, it must be 

 confessed, an advantage over his brother naturalists to 

 whom such accomplishments are denied the value and 

 importance of which it is almost impossible to over- 

 estimate. Most naturalists who have to depend upon the 

 labours of others to illustrate their works (and they are 

 the great majority of their class) have but too often to 

 deplore either the lifeless and "wooden" character of 

 the sketches with which they are supplied, or, when 

 higher things are attempted, the sacrifice of accuracy of 

 detail to artistic effect. For, among at least a large per- 

 centage of professional zoological artists, the combination 

 of lifelike posture with strict attention to details of forrri, 

 colour and anatomy seems to be almost unattainable. 

 An artist like Mr. Millais, on the other hand, who is well 

 acquainted with the special characteristics of the animals 

 he portrays, and is at the same time an accomplished 

 landscape and animal painter, is enabled to combine 

 zoological accuracy of detail with scenic effect in the 

 happiest manner. And we have in consequence pictures 

 of animal life which satisfy the professed naturalist in 

 regard to fidelity, and 

 likewise appeal with full 

 strength to the connois- 

 seur in art and the lover 

 of the beautiful in nature. ■ 



In an earlier work, "A 

 Breath from the Veldt," 

 Mr. Millais gave us some 

 startling, but apparently 

 truthful, sketches of ante- 

 lopes and vultures in 

 their most active phases 

 of movement ; and in the 

 present volume he has 

 done the same for the 

 British ducks and geese 

 and certain other of our 

 larger wild birds. Ex- 

 amples of the artist's 

 power and originaHty in 

 this style are displayed 

 in the plate of a pere- 

 grine swooping down 

 on a flight of frightened 



teal ; in the one of wild geese arriving from the 

 Arctic regions, where the figure in the foreground is a 

 marvellous example of artistic skill in representing a bird 

 in what seems an almost impossible attitude ; and, again, 

 in the plate of herons moving a party of wigeon ; and 

 also in the sketch of Loch Spynie at sunset, in which tlie 

 whole scene is alive with bird-life. Equally bold and 

 original are the sketches of flocks of wildfowl when raked 

 by a shot in their midst ; but we confess that such scenes 

 of slaughter are much less to our taste than those of birds 

 under more normal conditions, and we should have liked 

 the coloured plate of a flying mallard far better had the 

 bird been unwounded. Nor is the artist in any way less 

 at home in his pictures of bird-life in repose or slow 

 movement, of which the plates of mallards feeding, of 

 wild geese throwing out sentinels, and of teal in " bunched 

 and scattered formation " may be cited as charming and 

 exquisite examples. As an example of illustration of this 

 nature we reproduce, by permission of the publishers, the 

 annexed text-figure of mallard feeding. The flight, too, 

 of ducks and geese, as we shall have occasion to mention 

 again, is a favourite subject with Mr. Millais ; and as an 



1 " The Wildfowler in Scotland." By J. G. Millais. Pp. xv -t- 167. 

 Illustrated. (London : Longmans and Co., 1901.) Price 30J. net. 



example of the V-formation nothing can be better than 

 the plate, entitled " brent and their satellites." 



To those who have had no experience of wildfowl 

 shooting in Scotland and the isles, nothing can be more 

 wonderful than the profusion in which ducks and geese 

 occur during winter in their favourite resorts ; and few- 

 sights in the world can be more marvellous than the 

 flocks of these birds when assembled in their thousands- 

 and tens of thousands. Most wonderful of all, perhaps, 

 must be the arrival of wild geese from the Arctic regions. 

 By rare good fortune, as he tells us, the author has on- 

 two occasions witnessed this marvellous sight. On the 

 first occasion, in October, he writes : 



" I heard the first ' honk ' of the season coming fron> 

 far away up in the vast expanse of the blue heaven. 

 For a long time nothing could I see, until at last a tiny 

 speck appeared in the sky as far as the eye could reach, 

 and, watching it intently, I saw it grow into the form of 

 a goose that was slowly descending in great spirals. 

 This bird was followed at regular intervals by others of 

 the tribe subdivided into little parties of from six to te» 

 individuals. . . . The prime leader came down imme- 

 diately above the Inch, and while she was preparing \.o 

 alight there were still small companies evolving them- 

 selves from the blue expanse, until at last there must 



NO. 1 64 1, VOL. 63] 



Fig. I. — Mallard feeding in the shallows and on the mud. From " The Wildfowler in Scotland.' 



have been some fifteen hundred birds actually on the 

 wing, all in process of descent, and all following one 

 another at regular intervals. By and by, when the lead- 

 ing geese had settled, the parties at the rear seemed \o 

 straggle more, and longer intervals occurred between 

 them ; yet they kept coming in all day as I roamed 

 round and about the lake, till by the evening, when I 

 disturbed the company, there must have been between 

 two and three thousand geese sitting on the island." 



A keen and enthusiastic sportsman himself, Mr. Millais- 

 writes mainly for his brother sportsmen, and much of his 

 work, apart from the illustrations, will be interesting t» 

 them and to them alone. And this being so, he has 

 done well in alluding to the birds whose haunts and 

 habits he describes so graphically by their English names- 

 alone. But the author may also lay claim to be re- 

 garded as a field-naturalist of no mean ability, and 

 many of his observations with regard to the flight of 

 ducks are not to be found in any of the ornithological 

 works with which we are acquainted. Several of the 

 more interesting of these observations are given in the 

 appendix, which is specially devoted to the appearance 

 on the water of the different British ducks and the locali- 

 ties they especially affect in Scotland, and is accordingly 



