608 



SCIENCE 



[N. 8. Vol. XXXIV. No. 879 



congratulated on the mechanical excellence 

 of the completed volume. 



J. S. Plaskett 

 Dominion Obsebvatort, Ottawa, 

 October, 1911 



Photography for Bird-Lovers: a Practical 



Guide. By Bentley Beetham, F.Z.S. 



With Photographic Plates. London. 1911. 



Pp. i-vi + 122. 



This handy little Tolume is designed to 

 serre as a manual and guide in bird-photog- 

 raphy in its widest sense, and while addressed 

 to beginners in the art, and to lovers of birds 

 and of sport rather than to ornithologists and 

 trained naturalists, all interested in birds will 

 find in it much to attract them. More par- 

 ticularly, the expressed object of the author 

 is to show how pictures of birds, whether dead 

 or alive, captive or free, can be best obtained, 

 rather than to direct the steps of his reader 

 into the paths of the naturalist, to show him 

 how to study, and to use his camera as a tool 

 for recording and supporting his observations. 



In every such work we should like to see it 

 clearly stated that the higher object of bird- 

 photography is not simply to " embody a little 

 story," or even " to portray the living bird in 

 some characteristic pose or action," though 

 this be all very well, but rather to obtain 

 a pictorial analysis of behavior, as registered 

 in all the more characteristic movements and 

 attitudes, made or assumed by birds. This, 

 'tis true, is a subject which requires ample 

 leisure as well as training and skill, but one, 

 it would seem, in which many young stu- 

 dents, who, happily possessing the former, 

 might be led to acquire the latter, and thus 

 to extend the boundaries of knowledge. We 

 think that the attitude of any author could 

 be raised to this plane without loss in interest, 

 and with decided gain in value. 



Some of Mr. Beetham's specimen illustra- 

 tions, and particularly the habitat pictures, 

 which show the nest or bird with its surround- 

 ings, could hardly be improved, such as the 

 oyster catcher's eggs on page 28, or the 

 grouse on page 56, obtained by setting the 

 camera very low down. I think, however, that 

 the value to students of all really excellent 



photographs of this character would be en- 

 hanced by adding, either on the page or at the 

 end of the book, the essential photographic 

 data, a thing usually neglected. 



If one were disposed to be critical, though 

 we hope, not hypercritical, he could find more 

 exercise of this power in the longest and most 

 important chapter in the book, that on the use 

 of the concealing tent. The present reviewer, 

 so far as he knows, was the first to use a 

 bona fide unadorned tent for the close at hand 

 study of birds, in the summer of 1899, so that 

 perhaps he is a little over keen on the subject. 

 In a work on the " Home Life of Wild Birds," 

 published in 1901 and again in 1905, the bird- 

 tent was fully described and illustrated, with 

 an exposition of the psychological principles 

 governing its use. Many were inclined to look 

 askance upon our tent and methods in 1901, 

 but no attempt seems ever to have been made 

 to dispute the principles at stake. All this, 

 however, is a matter of history, and we are 

 now interested to see that our tent has be- 

 come a fixture for the intimate study of nest- 

 life, and further that at the end of this very 

 volume a " hiding tent " is advertised for 

 sale by a London dealer. To continue, the 

 present writer's tents, plain and unadorned, 

 have been in use — one of them at least — for 

 twelve years, and with them he has worked at 

 the close range of 70 nests, pertaining to 

 from 30 to 40 species of wild birds, often 

 spending a week at a given one. Further, 

 since accidents from every cause, including 

 the weather and living enemies, have hardly 

 exceeded one in ten, and can be reduced to 

 almost nothing by a proper use of the wire 

 screen whether the original position of a nest 

 is changed or not — he should be qualified to 

 speak on the score of experience at least. 



The use of the concealing tent is indeed 

 based upon certain fundamental principles, 

 the force of which experiments in the field, 

 year after year, have only tended to confirm. 

 While any detailed discussion of them would 

 be quite out of place here, we might intimate 

 that the most important are the gradual rise 

 of the " parental instincts," and consequent 

 depression of fear, most marked from the be- 

 ginning of incubation, the force of habit, and 



