No. 58. — 1907.] JOAN GIDEON LOTEN, F.R.S. 



231 



And there are also more valuable remarks ! 



For a very long time the paintings, or more correctly copies 

 of them, certainly borrowed from the works of Edwards and 

 Brown, continued to do service for illustrated works. As a 

 valuable proof of this may, inter alia, serve the little work pub- 

 lished in 1861 in this country by our fellow-countryman the 

 late Prof. P. Harting, the Bouwkunst van Dieren (reprint of a 

 paper in the periodical Album der Natuur), where at page 266 

 a wood engraving representing the nest of the Tailor-bird 

 is plainly a copy, though it be a rough one, of de Bevere's 

 plate here present. 



In the handsome work of Captain Legge, A History of the 

 Birds of Ceylon, mention is also made in an introduction of 

 paintings which in his day Loten had had prepared by a 

 " native artist."* I have not been able to ascertain if that 

 refers to duplicates of the plates in my possession or some 

 others, as also if and where these plates still exist. A letter 

 written by me some years ago to Mr. Legge came back as 

 undeliverable, and inquiries made subsequently through the 

 firm of Martinus Nijhoff of the London publisher led to no 

 result, f 



* Mr. van Houten gives these words in English, but they do not 

 occur in the introduction to Legge's work. After mentioning George 

 Edwards's Nat. Hist, of Uncommon Birds (the date of publication of 

 which is given as 1743), but not saying a word about Edwards's later 

 work (which, however, is occasionally referred to in the body of the 

 book, sometimes incorrectly), Legge says : — " During the latter half of 

 the eighteenth century Gideon Loten was nominated Governor of Ceylon 

 by the Dutch [sic], and, happening to be a great lover of birds, collected 

 and employed people to procure specimens of species which attracted 

 his notice ; and from his labours we first learn something of the peculiar 

 birds of the Island. He had drawings prepared of many species, which 

 he lent to an English naturalist [sec] named Peter Brown, who published 

 in London, in 1776, a quarto work styled ' Illustrations of Zoology.' ..... 

 The artist who delineated these species was Mr. Khuleelooddeen [sic !?]. 

 Some of the drawings are fairly accurate ; but others are grotesque and 

 unnatural, showing the poor state of perfection to which the illustra- 

 tion of books had up to that time been brought." In view of the fact 

 that Edwards's beautifully illustrated works had preceded Brown's far 

 inferior production, the deduction in the last sentence is absurd ; and 

 as to the illustrator of Brown's work, it was Brown himself (see further 

 on). Whence Legge got his " Mr. Khuleelooddeen" I cannot imagine. 



f Captam Legge resides (if still living) at Hobart, Tasmania. 



k 36-07 



