66 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



the late Fisheries Exhibition in Loudon, in which all due credit is given to 

 Mr. Gunn, naturalist, of Norwich, for his extensive series of fish-eating 

 birds SLvd cases of stuffed fish, the branch of taxidermy in which he chiefly 

 excels. Special mention, however, is made by Mr. Phillips— and in other 

 journals I have remarked similar comments — of Mr. Guan's case of Lesser 

 Terns, a sensational group most likely to attract attention ; but as, with 

 regard to that particular case, Mr. Gunn seems inclined to absorb all the 

 credit due to the sentiment and design, in justice, at least, to a Norwich 

 birdstuiler who has been dead some years, I must ask permission to 

 explain whence Mr. Gunn got his inspiration, and how such a group of 

 Terns happened to form a part of his collection. More than twenty years 

 ago I visited Salthouse, on our Norfolk coast, where, at that time, a large 

 colony of Lesser Terns bred on the beach, and, desirous of having a pair, 

 with the eggs, for my collection, and little contemplating the sad rebuff 

 which my collecting fit would experience, I watched a pair to their nest and 

 shot one as they rose. The bird fell dead; its mate, unscared by my 

 presence and the noise of the gun, hovered low over the fallen victim, and 

 once even attempted to lift it up by the bill. This was " too too," and I 

 killed the bereaved one to end its sorrows, though not my vexation at the 

 result of the first, thoughtless, shot. Thinking over this scene, it struck 

 me that a warning group might be made if the birds were arranged in a 

 case, in exact imitation of w^hat I had witnessed, with the eggs in a hollow 

 amongst shingle, gathered on the beach. Making a rough sketch of what 

 I wished to have represented I took it to my then birdstuffer, Mr. John 

 Sayer, of Norwich (to whom Mr. Gunn was formerly assistant), and from 

 my drawing he executed the beautiful case in my possession, which has 

 been so generally admired, and whicli, amongst my other exhibits in the 

 Norwich Fisheries Exhibition, in 1881, attracted special notice. Whether 

 Mr. Gunn, whose collection, at the Drill Hall, was arranged just opposite 

 mine, observing this fact, thought that a similar group would be an 

 attractive feature amongst his own cases in London, I must leave; but 

 with the exception of the stuffing of his own birds, slightly varying the 

 position of the hovering Tern by suspending it by the tail instead of the 

 wing (which Sayer did in the first instance, but altered at my suggestion), 

 and placing four eggs in the nest instead of three, a mistake pointed 

 out by Mr. Saunders, in his paper in ' Tbe Ibis' (1883, p. 352), neither 

 the sentiment nor the design is Mr. Gunn's more than a picture 

 painted from the work of some " old master " (to make the simile correct), 

 with a single figure, or tree in an altered position, could be called an 

 original ! I have, of course, no copyright in my own case of Terns, 

 though I have heard that Mr. Gunn, himself I presume, fearful of imitators, 

 has registered all his designs (?); and in his Catalogue (p. 18j appears the 

 following eutry: — "Case 122. Lesseu Teun. — Pair of adult birds and 



