SMALLER BRITISH LAND BIRDS FOR A MUSEUM. 45 



season of the year in which each species is to be obtained in its highest 

 degree of beauty ; and, as the plumage of many birds varies greatly 

 in different individuals, according to age, sex, and season, I shall also 

 endeavour to explain what number of specimens of each sort are 

 necessary to illustrate the species properly, and likewise the precise 

 periods at which the contrasts they afford would be exhibited to the 

 greatest advantage. 



In the birds of prey (Accipilres, Linnjeus), and in various aquatic 

 groups, the changes of appearance which the same species presents, at 

 different periods of existence are, in many instances^ so considerable, 

 as to have occasioned an unnecessary multiplication of species in the 

 works of the earlier naturalists ; but as the variations to which these 

 birds are subject are for the most part dependent on age more than 

 upon season, and as they have moreover long occupied the attention of 

 the first ornithologists, who in their several works have described them 

 with great minuteness, a repetition of them here would be superfluous. 

 The more particular object of this little essay is to note down a variety 

 of minor changes, which, from different causes, take place in the 

 plumage of the smaller birds, and which materially affect, in many 

 cases, the beauty of their tints ; for which reason, all who are forming 

 museums should be acquainted with them. 



It would be foreign to my purpose here to give minute directions 

 upon what I consider to be the best method of mounting and preserving 

 skins ; I am of opinion, indeed, that no kind of written direction is of 

 much use towards teaching the art of taxidermy, as it is now fashionably 

 called. It requires a vast deal of patience, and practice, and close 

 attention, to enable a person to stuff birds well, and those generally 

 become the greatest proficients who have taught themselves the art 

 by dint of their own ingenuity and perseverance. A few words, how- 

 ever, on the subject of bird-stuffing, may not perhaps be deemed 

 irrelevant. I want to recommend to the great majority of those who 

 undertake to preserve animals, the study of living nature, at present 

 so very generally neglected. There are hundreds of persons who under- 

 stand extremely well how to take off and prepare the skin of a bird, 

 and who can afterwards even mount it in the very best possible style, 

 but who have nevertheless no kind of notion whatever of finishing it 

 off in even a tolerable manner. This, of course, arises from their having 

 never studied the living originals. The specimens are got up without 

 attention either to form, attitude, or proportions, and they have, there- 

 fore, to persons accustomed to admire the beauty and symmetry of 



