180 



THE OOLOQIST 



An Egg Book. 



Perhaps some readers of THE 

 OOLOGIST may be interested to 

 know that a limited edition of tlie 

 "Oology of New England," by Elwin 

 A. Capen, is now on sale in a book 

 store in Boston, Mass. 



This book was originally published 

 to sell at fifteen dollars a volume, 

 but I understand that some time after 

 Mr. Capen's death his heirs found 

 parts of this first edition which for 

 some reason had never been bound in 

 book form. Although many of these 

 pages of text and plates were dam- 

 aged, enough perfect ones were found 

 to make it possible to have about one 

 hundred copies bound in fine condi- 

 tion. 



This book is described in the cata- 

 logue as "quarto, one hundred and ten 

 plates, and twenty-five plates sliowmg 

 more than three hundred eggs in their 

 natural sizes and true colors." Al- 

 though these plates were made up 

 some years ago before the art of print- 

 ing in colors was as well developed as 

 it is now, the pictures are good and 

 this is a fine chance to obtain a copy 

 of one of our well known New Eng- 

 land books. 



I believe that only about fifteen 

 copies are left unsold at the present 

 time. 



I sometimes wonder why it is that 

 no one now tries to publish a bird 

 book which would contain good large 

 pictures in natural colors of the birds 

 in their various plumages and a full 

 set of their eggs. Surely such a work 

 would be appreciated by ornithologists 

 and oologists all over the country and 

 would stand to the ever-lasting credit 

 of the man who produced it. The art 

 of printing in colors has been much 

 improved and is surely much cheaper 

 than in the early days of Wilson and 

 Audubon, and the people of this coun- 

 try today are better able, and I think 



quite willing, to buy books with satis 

 factory colored plates. The tendency 

 of the times, however, seem to be to 

 get out a "hand book" which can be 

 sold for two or three dollars, and this 

 certainly does a lot of good by making 

 the study of bird life popular. 



But one really good, large book with 

 good colored plates copied from ar- 

 tists' drawings which showed both 

 birds and eggs would find a ready 

 sale. Of course it would neces- 

 sarily be rather an expensive 

 venture, because of the cost of the 

 original drawings. But color photo- 

 graphy is very unsatisfactory on ac- 

 count of the difficulty of obtaining 

 well-prepared specimens to work with. 

 Our color photography pictures gen- 

 erally show up the faults of the taxi- 

 dermis work so plainly as to be dis- 

 gusting to the true nature student. 

 Although a reproduction of an artist's 

 painting may be somewhat fautly in 

 some of the minor details of color- 

 ing, the nice positions, outlines and 

 expressions of the birds more than 

 make up for it. A book picturing 

 all the birds of this country and also 

 their eggs would certainly be almost 

 too much to expect. But if someone 

 would get out a book on one order of 

 birds, the Raptores, or the Limicolae 

 for instance, the cost would not be 

 excessive and we would have a start 

 in the right direction. Anyone knows 

 that you can learn more about the 

 appearance of a bird or bird's egg by 

 one glance at a colored picture than 

 you can possibly learn from a half 

 hour's study of printed description 

 alone. 



In nearly all things we are making 

 good progress, but some of our recent 

 bird books are not all that could be 

 desired in that line. Perhaps it 

 would be possible to issue a work of 

 this kind in twelve or more separate 

 parts to be delivered once a month 



