VOL. XI.] JOHN HUNT. 135 
The illustrations of the British Ornithology are accurately 
coloured, pictorially pleasing, and lack that gaudiness and 
extravagance of colour which so often mar similar pictures 
of the period. The plates were engraved by John Hunt 
himself on copper, some of them being coloured by him, and 
some by his son, S. V. Hunt, who was an artist.* The pros- 
pectus issued with Part III, to which T have already alluded, 
states: ‘J. H. pledges himself that every Portrait introduced 
into the Work shall be from an original Drawing, made either 
from the living Bird, or from a specimen in a high state of 
preservation.” It is therefore disconcerting to find that 
many of Hunt’s plates very closely resemble those by 
Bewick + and that some of them only differ in that they 
face the reverse way (e.g. White-tailed Eagle, Black-headed 
Gull). At the time when the British Ornithology was 
published “cribbing ’’ was held as of little or no account, 
but it is the more inexplicable that this plagiarism should be 
most conspicuously traceable in the case of birds which no 
doubt Hunt had in his own collection or could have easily 
procured. 
To Hunt, however, must be given the credit of having been 
the first writer to figure and record the Red-crested Pochard 
as a British bird, and it may be observed that his plate of the 
Sedge-Warbler was undoubtedly taken from a specimen of 
the Aquatic Warbler. His plate of the Coal-Titmouse appears 
to represent the continental race, and that of the Red- 
necked Grebe merits attention on account of the bird depicted 
being in immature plumage. The plate of the ““ Red Godwit, 
Sco. Lapponica,’’ more closely resembles the Black-tailed 
Godwit, while that of the Spotted Crake, from the markedly 
dark chin and forehead of the bird portrayed, suggests that 
this plate may have been drawn from a Carolina Rail. Joseph 
Clarke, in a letter to Newton, dated 17th March, 1885 (preserved 
in the copy of the British Ornithology in the Newton Library, 
Cambridge), says the plate of the Great Auk was “ the last 
plate Hunt executed . . . which he did not live to colour and 
publish,’ and Newton has added a note in this copy that 
“the uncoloured plate representing the Great Auk, in E. 
* Samuel Valentine Hunt, second son of John Hunt, engraver and 
artist, born at Norwich 14th February, 1803, baptized at the Church of 
St. Michael at Plea, 8th January, 1804, emigrated with his father in 
1834 to America, lived at Bay Ridge, Long Island, died a few years prior 
to 1897, leaving a wife surviving him. A picture by him is in the 
Norwich Castle Museum, and several of his etchings are in thelibrary of 
Mr. Colman. 
{ History of British Birds : 1797-1804: and subsequent editions. 
