360 BRITISH BIRDS. 



appeared, this edition being in many respects the best. 

 The " Birds " marked Bewick's high- water mark as an 

 artist, the only book of any real importance which he 

 subsequently produced being " .Esop's Fables," in 1818. 



As has above been mentioned, the value of the 

 " History of British Birds " rests on its wood-cuts alone, 

 and although it has been frequently stated that Bewick 

 had from his youth upwards a great leaning towards the 

 study of birds, a careful investigation seems to show that 

 he only possessed the ordinary interest in Nature common 

 to most intelligent boys brought up in the country ; indeed, 

 on his own showing his chief delight as a youth consisted 

 in joining the local " hunting parties." and in observing 

 the habits of the various " beasts of the chase." It is 

 true that in his "Memoir " he makes some not infrequent 

 mentions of his early observations and interest in orni- 

 thology, and he further enlarges on this subject in the 

 preface to the sixth edition of his " Birds " ; but it was 

 only in human nature that a man who had seen edition 

 after edition of his ornithological writings eagerly 

 absorbed by the public, should come to consider himself 

 as a zoologist, both by inclination as well as study. Be 

 this as it may, the excellence of his wood-cuts* stands out 

 beyond all doubt or question, and the debt we owe to the 

 memory of Thomas Bewick is great and lasting. 



Of the remainder of Thomas Bewick's life we can here 

 make but the briefest mention. His wife (Isabella 

 Elliot, of Ovingdean), whom he had married in 1786, died 

 in 1826, and in November, 1828, at the ripe old age of 

 seventy-five, he followed her to the grave, and lies buried 

 by her side in Ovingham churchyard, " at the west end 

 of the church near the steeple." He continued working 



* Although Bewick seems to have been the first engraver to use 

 wood-blocks for the representation of birds with any signal success, 

 the process had, of course, been made use of on the Continent for that 

 purpose, while in this country it had already been employed in 1743 to 

 illustrate a work entitled " Ornithologia Nova: or a new General 

 History of Birds," a second edition of which, with a somewhat different 

 title, appeared in 1745. 



