220 



JOURNAL, H.A.S. (CEYLON). 



[Vol. XIX. 



Let me now for some moments direct your attention parti- 

 cularly to the artist's work, I mean to the plates themselves. 

 They are all drawn from life or from newly-killed animals. 



In number 144 paintings, they depict : — 5 mammals, 103 

 birds, 7 fishes, 3 crustaceans, 3 cephalopod molluscs (so-called 

 " ink-fish "), 10 insects, 13 plants ; there being besides on the 

 plates of birds also various plants represented from life. 



There are in addition, being in a separate group, ten plates that 

 are not by de Bevere, but were executed by others and mostly 

 in later years, which were in the collection as I bought it. 



You see that the pictures of birds form by far the majority. 

 It also seems to me that these are in the main the most beauti- 

 ful in execution. 



Regarding the execution and the value of these plates, now 

 a single word. 



Although it cannot be ignored that certain figures are some- 

 what stiff and, owing to insufficient shading, do not entirely 

 represent the rounding of the bodies, they are otherwise 

 deserving only of praise. 



Let us notice, first of all, the complete firmness of the hand 

 that controlled the drawing pencil and brush, whereby every- 

 thing appears quite distinctly on the paper, and in addition 

 the astonishing precision with which forms and colours are 

 represented. The artist extemporized nothing, but remained 

 true to nature even to the smallest details, were it a bird, a 

 fish, a flower, or anything else that he was delineating. That 

 precision was demonstrated to me still more clearly when last 

 week, assisted by Dr. van Oort, in the National Museum of 

 Natural History at Leiden, for the identification of the birds 

 depicted, I compared the plates with those in standard works 

 of more recent date or the stuffed birds in the collection there. 

 There, where, as is so often the case, various kinds closely 

 allied and much resembling each other exist, the painted ones 

 were always recognizable by little peculiarities of the plumage. 



I may by way of explanation refer to two points. Look, for 

 example, in the picture of the Ceylonese Lemur,* at the form of 



* The Ceylon Loris or Sloth : see picture in Tennent's Nat. Hist, of 

 Ceylon 12. Plate xliv. in Brown's New Illust. of Zool. is of the Lemur, 

 but whence it is copied is not stated. 



