'Nature PbotograpJoy 7 



writer, clever though he may be with his pen, who 

 can give us as clear a conception of the manifold 

 duties of a bird's daily life as can a series of pho- 

 tographs? In accuracy of detail as well as artistic 

 conception the late W. Hamilton Gibson far sur- 

 passed all other artists in his delineation of animal 

 and insect life, and yet he left much to be desired. 

 He was not infallible. The camera, when prop- 

 erly used, is. 



Then, too, a photograph of any animal life that 

 is now common may at some future time be of 

 extreme value to naturalists, for we can never tell 

 how soon any of the mammals or birds may be- 

 come extinct. 



Some species of herons are rapidly becoming 

 fewer and fewer in number, and may soon be a 

 thing of the past; and photographic records of the 

 few remaining large rookeries which exist in this 

 country, where once there were many, will pre- 

 serve for all time to come impressions of con- 

 ditions which will soon be no more. 



What would the scientists of to-day not give if 

 only our ancestors of the past ages had been 

 versed in camera art and had left, among their 

 other relics, photographic plates of the monsters 

 that at that time inhabited the world. That, of 

 course, is stretching the limits of the possible ; 

 but to come down to more modern times, what an 

 invaluable addition to our knowledge of the life 



