Nature Photography n 



world is like the lady quoted above. She un- 

 doubtedly had known of some one who made 

 photographs in the way she mentioned and so 

 jumped to the conclusion that all others must, 

 necessarily, do the same. 



Not many months ago I saw, in one of our 

 leading monthly magazines, an article on nest- 

 ing birds illustrated with photographs which the 

 author took care to explain had taken him many 

 hours of hard work to obtain. No doubt he 

 had spent some time in shooting, stuffing, and 

 arranging his specimens, for, to a practised eye, 

 it was entirely obvious that, without an excep- 

 tion, they were stuffed birds. No doubt many 

 who read that article were entirely credulous 

 and thought the results wonderful ; but there 

 were many others, like myself, who were dis- 

 gusted with it, and who thought it no credit, 

 not only to the author, but to the editor of the 

 magazine who had allowed such productions to 

 pass muster. In another magazine I also remem- 

 ber seeing the photograph of a deer which was 

 such a poor specimen of the taxidermist's art that 

 no one who had ever seen a deer alive could be 

 fooled by it, and yet the author of the monstrosity 

 had the temerity to describe at length just how 

 he had obtained it and what hours of patience 

 and hard work it had cost him. 



I cite these instances to show the beginner 



