3570 The Zoologist — June, 1873. 



unoccupied skewers. In the distance is a thick grove of trees 

 similarly provided with skewers, towards which clouds of pigeons 

 are tending. In the foreground a lady and gentleman are watching 

 this process of self-immolation, whilst a lad, kneeling beside them, 

 turns a spit on which sixteen or twenty pigeons are roasting. 



Tlie Ornithologist (No. 380), by Mr. H. S. Marks, is the picture 

 of pictures : it exhibits an extraordinary combination of quiet 

 humour, artistic skill, and knowledge of Natural History : the bird- 

 skins are those of veritable birds ; every bird is so correctly repre- 

 sented that you recognize it at once, but it has passed through the 

 hands of the birdstufFer, and therefore is not a living bird, but a 

 compound of feathers, skin and wire, brought into that kind of juxta- 

 position which pourtrays the taste of the taxidermist, but has not the 

 most remote resemblance to the living animal which once inhabited 

 the skin : the legs are ostentatiously wired legs, the eyes osten- 

 tatiously glass eyes, excepting in one or two instances where a bit 

 of cotton-wool occupies the cavity : the ornithologist is standing 

 on a pair of steps before a new cabinet with glass-doors, and with 

 his hand and voice is giving instructions to his very neat and 

 respectable assistant as to which specimen is to be handed up next: 

 these specimens are all standing, higgledy piggledy, on the floor, 

 and have been just removed from some less spacious and less con- 

 venient cabinet now discarded : under one arm the assistant holds 

 a flamingo, and under the other a stork, and these, though for the 

 moment in rather uncomfortable attitudes, seem to be taking a 

 respectful and subdued interest in the proceedings: on the table to 

 the right is a basket containing heads, on another to the left are 

 some brilliant exotics under a glass shade, which is painted as well 

 as if by some old Dutchman ; and on the wall is a paper illustrating 

 . our knowledge of the Dodo, three figures of that eminent bird being 

 placed in juxtaposition for comparison. 



Mr. Davis gives us, in No. 453, the cattle which he painted last 

 year, but under an entirely different aspect; then he called his 

 picture A Panic ; the present painting is intituled Summer After- 

 noon ; this year's is the more pleasing picture, last year's the more 

 forcible. I have already dwelt long enough on the extreme diffi- 

 culty of representing cattle in violent action, but Mr. Davis, like 

 Rosa Bonheur, has attempted and accomplished the feat: he has 

 now mesmerised or Rarey^ic^ the same panic-struck animals, and 

 has subdued them to all the quietness of lambs. Even Landseer 



