362 



Bird - Lore 



2^irb=1lore 



A Bi-Monthly Magazine 

 Devoted to the Study and Protection of Birds 



OFFICIAL ORGAN OF THE AUDUBON SOCIETIES 



Edited by FRANK M. CHAPMAN 



Contributing Editor, MABELOSGOOD WRIGHT 



Published by D. APPLETON & CO. 



Vol. XXIV Published December 1, 1922 No. 6 



SUBSCRIPTION RATES 



Price in the United States, one dollar and fiftv cents a year; 

 outside the United States, one dollar and seventy-five cents, 

 postage paid. 



COPYRIGHTED, 1922, BY FRANK M. CHAPMAN 



Bird-Lore's Motto: 

 A Bird in the Bush Is Worth Two in the Hand 



In a preceding number of Bird-Lore a 

 brief comparison was made of the life and 

 works of J. A. Allen and John Burroughs, 

 two nature-lovers who, with essentially 

 similar boyhoods and ancestral backgrounds, 

 developed on wholly different lines. The 

 death of W. H. Hudson arouses a desire to 

 find his place in this notable trio of natural- 

 ists. It has been said that Hudson was the 

 product of his environment, but if by this 

 is meant that his interest in nature was the 

 outcome of his early life on the Argentine 

 pampas, the remark is far from the truth. 



Like Allen and Burroughs, Hudson was 

 born a nature-lover. Like them, also, he 

 had brothers who were strangers to his 

 tastes. His New England mother (for 

 America may share with England pride in 

 Hudson's achievements) alone seemed to 

 understand his sympathy with birds, trees, 

 and flowers, which without other encourage- 

 ment, grew with his growth. 



Living in a country whose birds were little 

 known, he became, for a time, a collecting 

 naturalist. Hundreds of specimens prepared 

 by him are contained in our museums. 

 Among a group on which we are now working, 

 for example, we find three specimens col- 

 lected by Hudson at Conchitas, about 

 fifteen miles east of Buenos Aires in 1868. 



This phase of Hudson's life ended with the 

 publication (in conjunction with P. L. 

 Sclater) of his 'Argentine Ornithology.' 

 Thereafter it was the sentiment rather than 

 the science of bird-life to which he gave 

 expression, and his subsequent publications, 



like those of Burroughs, were of the literary 

 rather than of the technical naturalist. 



In their attitude toward nature, Hudson 

 and Burroughs had much in common. Their 

 differences were primarily those of tempera- 

 ment. Hudson's was the more sensitive 

 nature and his greater introspectiveness was 

 occasioned by a shyer, more retiring dispo- 

 sition. Burroughs' friends were a legion; 

 Hudson had comparatively few, not because 

 he was self-sufficient, as we imagine Thoreau 

 may have been, but rather because he found 

 few persons with whom he had real affinity. 



To say that Hudson was not the product 

 of his early environment does not imply 

 that he was not profoundly influenced by 

 it, for he was, and he continued to be through- 

 out his hfe. Had Hudson remained in 

 Argentina it seems doubtful if his powers 

 would have reached that measure of develop- 

 ment which placed him in the first rank of 

 the writers of his day. But when in his 

 young manhood he left Argentina for 

 England he carried with him a surprising 

 store of experiences the memory of which, 

 as his youth receded, became increasingly 

 dear and vivid. These mental pictures, 

 idealized by the lapse of years, formed a 

 background against which he viewed much 

 of his subsequent life. We wonder whether 

 Hudson had his boyhood on the pampas in 

 mind when in 'A Traveller of Little Things' 

 (1921) he wrote: "If we see a thing once or 

 several times we see it ever after as we first 

 saw it; if we go on seeing it every day or 

 every week for years and years, we do not 

 register a countless series of new distinct 

 impressions, recording all its changes; the 

 new impressions fall upon and obliterate the 

 others and it is like a series of photographs, 

 not arranged side by side for future inspec- 

 tion, but in a pile, the top one alone remaining 

 visible." 



Hudson reveals himself most fully in his 

 autobiographical 'Far Away and Long Ago.' 

 Written more than three score years after 

 the events recorded in it occurred, it is a 

 series of mental photographs, surprising in 

 their detail, "arranged side by side." For 

 keen self analysis of an exceptionally respon- 

 sive, sympathetic nature, we commend 

 especially his chapter on 'Animism.' 



