CONCLUSION CI 



thanking the subscribers to this work for their kindness in 

 ordering advance copies. The only worrying circumstance 

 connected with the publication of this book was the difficulty 

 of beating up subscribers. After addressing eight hundred 

 circulars with my own hand, the number of copies ordered in 

 response was so limited that the work might have remained 

 unpublished, had not such friends as C. P. Archibald and F. P. 

 Johnson worked hard to get the book taken up by the county 

 men. I have the greater pleasure in thanking those who, like 

 Mr. Harvie-Brown, not only encouraged me to persevere in the 

 face of a discouragement which made me disposed to abjure 

 the printing press altogether, but themselves subscribed for 

 supplementary copies. My personal friends have shown me the 

 kindest possible attention in this uninteresting matter. The 

 illustrations are not perhaps as successful as they might have 

 been, but they have the advantage of being based on photographs 

 taken on purpose for this work. 1 I owe the existence of these last 

 to the energy of Mr. Thorpe, whose presence in Carlisle during 

 the printing of this book, has enabled me to obtain the opinion of 

 a keen local ornithologist on all that I have written. Mr. Thorpe 

 is much more than a local ornithologist, and his criticism 

 is always valuable. His devotion to my interests induced him 

 to carry his cameras over the hill- tops of Lakeland, sometimes 

 joining Mr. H. E. Eawson and myself in visiting the breeding- 

 grounds of the rare and decreasing Dotterel — sometimes sliding 

 down slippery screes of rock in nimble pursuit of the Eed Deer, 

 which lent a deaf ear to all the blandishments of their admirer, 

 and defied his efforts to take their photographs. The eyries of 

 the Sea Eagle at Wallow Crag, Haweswater, and Buck Crag, 

 Martindale, proved difficult to photograph, because, in each 

 instance, the birds nested in the shadow of a great rock, so 

 that no gleams of sunlight could reach their gloomy eyrie. 

 Our artist, Mr. Kinneard, has ventured upon a slight anachronism 

 in representing the old Eagles in the act of returning to their 

 eyrie at Buck Crag ; the cap of grey cloud, shewn hovering 

 daintily over the breast of the precipice, is highly characteristic 



1 The coloured plates of the Isabelline Wheatear and Frigate Petrel are 

 portraits of specimens unique as British. 



