XX 
BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR. 
was prepared with a charming simplicity of detail, the few dried 
ferns and sober surroundings serving as a foil to the glittering 
plumage of the birds themselves. So long as these birds were in 
Gould’s possession the cases were placed in a large room with light 
coming from above them, and each bird was carefully set at the 
angle that would best display the metallic lustre of its plumage, 
producing thus separately and collectively a fine effect of colour. 
It is much to be regretted that in the National Museum no suitable 
space is available where they can be shown to equal advantage. When 
the season was oyer and the building was demolished and its materials 
were sold, Gould found himself with a clear profit of £800 (visitors paid 
the modest sum of sixpence for admission to the exhibition), and he 
further gained the names of seventy-two subscribers to his ‘ Monograph 
of the Humming-Birds,’ including nearly all the crowned heads of 
Europe. In the year 1849 the ‘ Monograph of the Trochilidce ’ was 
commenced, and in 1850 another great work, namely the ‘ Birds of Asia,’ 
and a very interesting ‘ Monograph of the Odontophorince, or Partridges 
of America,’ complete in a single folio volume, was issued. In 1851 
the first part of the Supplement to the ‘ Birds of Australia ’ was 
published, and this was finished in 1869. In 1854 appeared the second 
edition of his ‘ Monograph of the Ramphastidce ’; and he was occupied 
with the different works above mentioned until 1861, when the * Mono¬ 
graph of the Humming-Birds ’ was finished. In the ensuing year Gould 
commenced his celebrated work on the ‘Birds of Great Britain,’ and 
just as he had invested the Humming-Birds with their natural beauty by 
means of a process of metallic reproduction, which was the admiration 
of scientists and artists alike, so now he threw his whole soul into 
the delineation of our native birds, and he searched high and low for 
specimens of the nestlings of the rarer species, while the vast majority 
of the plates were drawn from freshly killed specimens, and the pictures 
of the nests were taken from the objects themselves. Such beautiful 
illustrations as those of the ‘ Birds of Great Britain ’ scarcely existed 
