BIRDS FROM M 01 DART. 
13 
when the feathers are ready to drop out, they are no longer the 
beautiful objects that they were — the slender recurved plumes, 
white as driven snow, with all their hair-like filaments intact. 
These old feathers are dull or dirty white in colour, out of curl 
at the tips, and with many of the filaments broken. 
“ The story that these nuptial featliers are shed in some places 
in such amazing quantities that it would be false economy to 
shoot the birds to obtain them ; and that probably thousands, 
nay, millions, of such cast feathers are supplied to the London 
shops, is preposterous. The birds are not excessively abundant ; 
they subsist on fish, crabs, and such creatures, and can live only 
in swamps. Each bird produces only a small number of these 
valued feathers, and when he sheds them he does not shed them 
all together in some spot where a feather-hunter will be sure to 
find them. He drops them one by one at odd times, some 
falling in the water where he fishes, some among the trees and 
rushes where he roosts, and some are shed when he is on the 
wing going from place to place.” 
(Mrs.) E. Phillips. 
Vaughan House, Croydon, 
December 23, 1896. 
[We gladly insert the above important opinions on the 
statement published in our November number, and invite Mrs. 
(or Miss) Stock, whose address we did not keep, to communicate 
further with us on the subject, which, as we learn from other 
correspondents, is exciting much interest in Selbornian circles. — 
Ed. N.N.] 
BIRDS FROM MOIDART.- 
Mrs. Blackburn has been well known by name to ornithologists since, in 
1872, she confirmed Dr. Jennet’s observations on the callow young cuckoo’s 
marvellous powers and habit of ejecting the other young birds which had the 
misfortune to be hatched in the nest with it. We are glad to have a sketch of 
the incident which came under this excellent observer’s notice (which appeared 
originally in a slightly different form in The Pipits, and again in Gould’s Intro- 
duction to the Birds of Great Britain) reproduced in the present volume. 
Another plate represents very faithfully a fledged young cuckoo and its foster 
parent, and a third an adult cuckoo. These will be useful to those who are 
studying our birds in the field, and trying to learn something about their changes 
of plumage. But we are anticipating. This sumptuous volume consists of a set 
of plates reproduced from Mrs. Blackburn’s drawings; and notes about the subject 
of each plate, varying in length for the best of all possible reasons, namely, that 
the author had more worth telling to say about some birds than about others, 
and used no padding. A few of the plates represent scenery with characteristic 
birds prominently introduced, and scenes in bird-life. But the greater number 
of them are portraits of different species ; in some cases together with their nests. 
We do not think they are all of equal merit, or that all of them have much merit. 
* Birds from Moidart and Elsewhere. Drawn from Nature by Mrs. Hugh 
Blackburn (B). Small 4to, pp. viii., 191 ; 87 plates. Edinburgh: David Douglas, 
1895. 
