BIRD* PICTURES 
! 
By William E. D. Scott 
Illustrated from Photographs of Stuffed Birds by A. R. Dugmore, Esq. 
E Germans have an 
old proverb liken- 
ing any person or 
object embodying 
stiffness and gro- 
tesqueness to a 
stuffed bird. It 
seems a fair com- 
parison, looking at 
the multitude of specimens on the shelves 
of the cases in our great museums, both 
here and abroad, and having at the same 
time in mind feathered acquaintances of 
the forest, meadow, river, and seashore. 
Or, referring to more intimate friends, 
though it seems almost a sacrilege to at- 
tempt to preserve them, who has been at 
all satisfied with the effort to reproduce 
the form of the pet canary known for years, 
or the parrot who has become a familiar 
daily friend ? 
It is not difficult to give sufficient rea- 
son for this. The people who come into 
our daily life rarely get portraits, whether 
by painter or camera, that please. The 
critic most difficult to deal with is the close 
and old friend, who has idealized the per- 
sonality, has seen something the artist 
failed to discriminate or the camera to de- 
tect. The subtle attribute that goes to 
make the personality of the individual is 
what we expect, what we hope for, what 
we rarely realize. 
The silent birds and beasts of our great 
collections, having their due share of 
beauty and grace, of high and low attri- 
butes, in short, or their individuality, are in 
the main dealt with from the mechanical 
side, by mechanics, Avith the result of a 
certain set conventionality of position and 
expression, that being duplicated many, 
many thousand times, has become a thing 
proverbial for stiffness : 
“ Er sieht wie ein ausgestopfter Vogel aus.” 
The Avriter Avishes fully to recognize 
whatever steps have been taken in the 
British Museum, in the American 
Museum, and by many profes- 
sional and amateur ornithologists 
to raise the standard of this kind 
of Avork, and the special attention 
of the reader is called to an arti- 
cle entitled “ Ornithology at South 
Kensington,” by R. BoAvdler 
Sharpe, in The E/igUsh Illustrated 
Magazine for December, 1887, 
pp. 165-175. Nor must the ef- 
forts in the same direction at the 
American Museum at Central 
Park, or the recent Avriting of Dr. 
R. W. Shufeldt on this subject, be 
overlooked, and yet all these are 
but steps in the right direction, 
leaAung much to be desired. 
NotAvishing in any Avay to dis- 
parage the many patient Avorkers 
whose lives have been given to 
the preservation of birds and other 
animals, yet one must seek in these 
Florida Clapper-rail. 
Rallus longirostris scottii (Senn). 
