viii Unexplored Spain 



them to discern the line where Nature stops and where fraud 

 and "fiiking" begin. At any rate we frequently read purring 

 approval of what appears to us meretricious imposture, and see 

 writers lauded as constellations whom we should condemn as 

 charlatans. Beyond the Atlantic President Roosevelt (as he 

 then was) went bald-headed for the " Nature -fakers," and in 

 America the reader has been put upon his guard. If he still 

 likes "sensations" — well, that's what he likes. But he Imys 

 such fiction forewarned. 



In the illustration of wild- life our views are also, in some 

 degree, divergent from current ideas. Animal -photography has 

 developed with such giant strides and has taught us such valuable 

 lessons (for which none are more grateful than the Authors), that 

 there is danger of coming to regard it, not as a means to an end 

 but as the actual end itself. While photography promises uses 

 the value of which it would be difficult to exaggerate, yet it has 

 defects and limitations which should not be ignored. First as 

 regards animals in motion ; the camera sees too quick — so infinitely 

 quicker than the human eye that attitudes and efi'ects are 

 portrayed which we do not, and cannot see. Witness a photograph 

 of the finish for the Derby. Galloping horses do not figure so 

 on the human retina — with all four legs jammed beneath the 

 body like a dead beetle. No doubt the camera exhibits an unseen 

 phase in the actual action and so reveals its process ; but that 

 phase is not what mortals see. Similarly with birds in flight, 

 the human eye only catches the form during the instantaneous 

 arrest of the wing at the end of each stroke — in many cases not 

 even so much as that. But the camera snaps the whirling pinion 

 at mid-stroke or at any intermediate point. The result is 

 altogether admirable as an exposition of the mechanical processes of 

 flight; but it fails as an illustration, inasmuch as it illustrates a 

 pose which Nature has expressly concealed from our view. 



Secondly, in relation to still life. Here the camera is not 

 only too cjuick, but too faithful. A tiny ruflfled plume, a feather 

 caught up by the breeze with the momentary shadow it casts, 

 even an intrusive bough or blade of grass — all are repro- 



