Preface 1X 
duced with such rigid faithfulness and conspicuous effect that 
what are in fact merest minute details assume a wholly false 
proportion, mislead the eye, and disguise the whole picture. 
True, these things are actually there; but the human eye enjoys 
a faculty (which the camera does not) of selecting its objective 
and ignoring, or reducing to its correct relative value each 
extrinsic detail; of looking, as it were, through obstacles and 
concentrating its power upon the one main subject of study. 
The portrayal of wildfowl presents a peculiar difficulty. This 
group differs in two essential characters from the rest of the 
bird-world. Though clad in feathers, yet those feathers are not 
“feathery.” Rather may they be described as a steely water- 
tight encasement, as distinct from the covering, say of game-birds 
as mackintosh differs from satin. Each plume possesses a com- 
pactness of web and firmness of texture that combine to produce 
a rigidity, and this, it so happens, both in form and colour. For 
in this group the colours, too, or patterns of colour, are clean-cut, 
the contrasts strong and sharply defined. The plumage of wild- 
fowl, in short, is characterised by lack of subdued tints and half- 
tones. That is its beauty and its glory; but the fact presents a 
stumbling-block to treatment, especially in colour. 
The difficulty follows consequentially. Subjects of such char- 
acter and crude coloration defy accustomed methods. That is not 
the fault of the artist; rather it reveals the limitations of Art. 
Just as in landscape distance ever demands an “atmosphere” 
more or less obliterative of distinctive detail afar (though such 
detail may be visible to non-artistic eyesight miles away), so in 
birds of sharply contrasted colouring the needed effect can only 
(it would appear) be attained by processes of softening which are 
not, in fact, correct, and which ruin the real picture as designed 
by Nature. 
No wild bird (and wildfowl] least of all) can be portrayed from 
captive specimens—still less from bedraggled corpses selected in 
Leadenhall market. In the latter every essential feature has 
disappeared. The ruftled remains resemble the beauty of their 
originals only as a dish-clout may recall some previous existence 
