358 BRITISH BIRDS. 



to visit the museum there, which contained the collection 

 of birds formed by Marmaduke TunstalL* For nearly 

 two months Bewick remained at " Wy cliff e," making 

 drawings from the specimens there (some of these being 

 in water-colour) and commenced to engrave from them 

 as soon as he returned to Newcastle. Finding, however, 

 " the very great difference between preserved specimens 

 and those from Nature .... I never felt satisfied with 

 them .... and was driven to wait for birds newly shot 

 or brought to me alive." All this, of course, involved 

 considerable delay, but " after working many a late hour 

 upon the cuts " the first volume of " British Birds," 

 entitled " Land Birds," appeared in 1797. " Mr. Beilby," 

 as Bewick tells us (Memoir, p. 171), "undertook the 

 writing or compilation of this (the first) volume, in which 

 I assisted him a great deal more than I had done with the 

 ' Quadrupeds.' " Bewick was therefore surprised to 

 find that Beilby was determined on being recognised as 

 the sole author of the book. To this claim Bewick 

 strongly objected, and although through the intervention 

 of mutual friends, the title-page of the first volume 

 merely bore the legend " Printed . . . for Beilby and 

 Bewick," neither of them being named as authors, f 

 they found it impossible to work in harmony any longer, 

 and their partnership was dissolved, Bewick buying up 

 Beilby's share in the " Quadrupeds " and the first volume 

 of the " Birds." 



Bewick was now thrown upon his own resources as an 

 author, and by consulting all the available authorities, 

 and making use of his own knowledge and observations, 

 he composed the text of the second volume, entitled 

 " Water-Birds." This appeared in 1804, and in the 

 preface Bewick states that " owing to a separationof 



* Marmaduke Tunstall (1743-1790), the anonymous author of the 

 " Ornithologica Britannica," London, 1771, 1 vol. folio. For an accovint 

 of his life, vide Fox's "Synopsis of the Newcastle Museum," where his 

 collection now is. It was for this same Marmaduke Tunstall that 

 Bewick had in 1789 executed his famous wood-cut of the " Chillingham 

 BuU." 



t cf. conclusion of Preface to 1st vol. " British Birds." 



