THOMAS BEWICK. 



215 



another plan ; and as the figures do not always head the pages, as in the 

 earlier volumes, the work is altogether less imposing in style. Notwithstand- 

 ing these alterations, only three very insignificant new cuts are added, on 

 pp. 294, 296, and 327, in the first Part. The paper employed for this edition, 

 though much poorer in quality than any of the others, has produced impres- 

 sions of the cuts more generally perfect than in later or earlier copies. Even 

 the first edition does not always excel these, and the proofs published in 1825 

 are in many cases distinctly inferior, they having lost by insufficient pressure 

 in printing many of the delicate parts of the blocks "lowered " according to 

 Bewick's usual method. That this system was not always successful is 

 evidenced by the varying impressions, for when the thick hard paper of 

 many of the editions had not been sufficiently damped, the lowered parts are 

 sometimes not taken at all. The 1809 edition, being of thin and slightly 

 absorbent paper, was easily pressed into the minute parts of the blocks, 

 and occasionally details are brought up in these prints which in others are 

 only vaguely felt. An eminent naturalist and bird-stuffer in Newcastle, 

 Richard Wingate, coloured a complete set of Bewick's Birds, spending many 

 years over the task. The prints were of the 1805 edition, printed faint, so as 

 to take colour. Of these exquisitely coloured proofs Bewick wrote, "I 

 think there is in them a fidelity and a nearer approach to truth and nature 

 than anything of the kind I ever saw." 



On May 13th, 1807, the fifth edition of the Quadrupeds was adver- 

 tised for sale. Of this edition none were printed on royal octavo, and for 

 the imperial octavo and the demy octavo copies the prices were put up to 

 £1 us. 6d. and 13s. respectively. This edition contains only one new 

 figure, that of the Musk Bull, p. 49, a cut almost exactly a reverse of one 

 published on January 1st, 1794, in the eighteenth volume of " The Bee." 

 Three new vignettes are introduced, viz. a Rainy Day, a Stag, and 

 a Stage-coach, at pp. 65, 142, and 251. A letter, in the collection of 

 Mr. Pocock, from Bewick to Messrs. Vernor, Hood, and Sharpe, dated 



