146



Review.



REVEIW.


INDIAN PIGEONS AND DOVES. *


Mr. Stuart Baker has written exhaustively and interestingly

in this companion volume to his work on “ Indian Ducks,” neither

need he apologize for “ the egoism in the whole programme.” When

a work is produced, we want just that; the experiences, the views,

the personal observances of the writer, rather than quotations from

books already published.


And Mr. Stuart Baker has been a close observer of a beautiful

family of birds ; a good example of this being found in the chapter

on the Bengal Green Pigeon, where the description of how he

listened in silence to these birds’ soft mellow calls amongst some

Mango trees will appeal to aviculturists, more than to the graphic

account of shooting them, fun though it may be for those who take

pleasure therein ! to my mind a very selfish one !


There may be no danger of these Indian Pigeons, etc., going

the way of the late Passenger Pigeon of the United States, but

nevertheless the insatiable love of killing for mere enjoyment finds

no sympathetic chord in one’s heart. There is too much killing :

with men, for the sport of it, with women, for the wearing of it.

“ I have seen parties bring in over two hundred birds,” Mr. Stuart

Baker writes in a chapter on the “beautiful little” Pink-necked

Green Pigeon. This sort of thing may be considered “ sport,” but

it may also be written down as slaughter, and even butchery!


It was Professor Osborn who himself told the writer of this

critique that when a young man he visited a certain part of Canada,

and found it teeming with every possible kind of game ; he some

years afterwards, with the wonderful picture of wild life still clearly

in his mind’s eye, took members of his family to see, promising

them something worth looking at. They arrived : the place was a

wilderness! Man had stepped in and had shot down everything.

“ From that moment,” Professor Osborn said, “I who had delighted

“in shooting, put away gun and rifle, and vowed never to use them

“ again.”



* Indian Pigeons and Doves, by E. C. STUART BAKER, P.Z.S., F.L.S., etc.,

with twenty-seven coloured plates from drawings by H. Gronvold & G. E. Lodge.


WlTHERBY & CO., 326, High Holborn, London, 1913.



