Correspondence, Notes, etc.



75



CORRESPONDENCE, NOTES, ETC.



THE DECREASED PRICE OF BIRDS ; PRICES OF BOOKS,


ETC.


Sir, —I have pleasure in sending you herewith C. E. Dyson’s Book on

Bird-keeping, as received from the Author soon after publication. You will

see that the Preface is dated July 1S7S. That Preface, which I had not read

until now, mentions a previously published edition of the little work.


This book will enable you, or our Publisher, or anyone else interested

in the matter, to compare the prices of birds quoted in 1S78 with the prices

quoted in the previous edition. I do not think any very great difference

will be found, for I commenced collecting foreign birds about 1S69, and for

a good many years visited, once a week or so, the shops of the late Mr.

Clias. Jamrach, the late Mr. Abrahams, and a Mr. Rice who then had a shop

in the Commercial Road and who was killed mail} 7 years ago by a tiger he

tried to tame.


Between 1S68 and 1878 there was little change in the average price of

birds, except perhaps in the case of Leiothrix luteus, for I remember paying

£10 for a pair of the earliest importation, and I see C. E. Dyson’s book

quotes the price in 1878 at £1 10/- to £2 10/-. The other prices are approxi¬

mately those the above-named dealers charged in 1S69 and in the subse¬

quent ten years.


As regards the price of Gould’s book on Birds of Australia, stated to

be found catalogued in 1880 at ^175, whilst I wrote in the Avicultural

Magazine of November 1900 that twentjr years previously, i. e. in 1S80, it

was not to be had for less than 60 or So guineas, the apparent contradiction

is easily explained.


This magnificent work was published by the Author, and a great

number of copies were disposed of by subscription, went into public

libraries, or into the hands of very rich collectors. Between 1870 and 1880

I had verj r much desired to possess a copy, but found that dealers asked

about double the subscription price, or about ^175. I had commissioned

an antiquarian to let me know if the work ever appeared in the catalogue

of an auction or could be otherwise had at a moderate second-hand price.

After years of fruitless waiting for such an opportunity, the person com¬

missioned by me applied to the late Mr. Gould himself. Mr. Gould’s reply

was reported to me to the effect that he had only two copies, one of which

he intended to keep under any circumstances, the other he would part with.

I think the price mentioned was £§2 10/-, and when I refused to purchase

at that price my agent asked me to authorise him to bid £<oo —or sixtj T

guineas—which was beyond what the book would have been worth to me.


I only recently observed that Cassell’s Canaries and Cage Birds, of

which I was the author of the section dealing with Foreign Cage Birds,



