ALL SORTS AND CONDITIONS 129 



station Behnen, and then 30 verstes with horses 

 till the estate Martinishky." ^ 



One of the largest gaps in our knowledge of Euro- 

 pean birds was the life history of the various ducks 

 which frequent the Palaearctic regions, and to 

 gain a complete understanding of these birds and 

 their plumage I worked for many years, both in 

 amassing a collection of them and obtaining material. 

 Eventually I published two works entitled The 

 Natural History of the British Surface-feeding Ducks 

 and British Diving Ducks. The success of those 

 books led me to the more ambitious idea of pub- 

 lishing at some future time the monograph of the 

 ducks of the world, but when I came to work out 

 the cost, I found if the volumes were to be reproduced 

 in anything like the scale and quality to which 

 they were entitled, it would have involved a sum 

 of not less than £15,000 or £20,000. That such a 

 work would ever pay was out of the question, but 

 I would gladly have undertaken it if I could have 

 seen my way to reproduce the pictures and letter- 

 press on the lines of former works. This, however, 

 was not possible, and so, much to my regret, the 

 scheme was abandoned. My two most earnest 

 and unselfish co-operators in this venture were 

 Colonel Lord William Percy and Captain the Hon. 

 Gerald Legge. Both of these excellent field natural- 

 ists were ready to devote many years to help in 

 obtaining material and information in all parts 

 of the world of which our knowledge was deficient. 



1 One cannot help wondering what has happened to that 

 poor giri and her mother, since Germans and Bolshevists have 

 overrun that part of Russia. 



