Xll 
BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR. 
would be responsible for the illustrations. With his unfailing instinct he 
rightly estimated his wife’s artistic powers, and he broached the subject 
to her. “ But who will do the plates on stone ? ” she asked; for litho¬ 
graphy was not at that time an everyday matter as it is now. <c Who ? ” 
replied her husband. “ Why, you of course !” This was the story as 
told me by my old friend forty years after the event. Anyhow, aided 
by the sketches of her husband, Mrs. Gould did draw all the plates of 
the ‘ Century,’ and, with the exception of Bewick’s woodcuts and the 
beautiful illustrations of Swainson, no such clever drawings of birds had 
been seen in this country. By this time Gould had left the service of the 
Zoological Society and had a house in Broad Street, Golden Square, where 
Mr. Gerrard tells me he many times visited the young couple and saw 
Mrs. Gould at work upon the lithographic stones, which were destined 
to make the names of herself and her husband imperishable in the 
history of Ornithology. Considering that Gould was a self-taught man, 
his talents for sketching the details of a bird picture were remarkable; 
and though he had excellent interpreters in his wife, and afterwards in 
Mr. Lear, Mr. Bichter, and Mr. Hart, still his was always the moving 
spirit in designing the plates. 
When Gould died, and the papers were publishing notices of his 
career, the ‘ Times ’ alluded to him as a true Priest of Nature, and the 
following letter from the late Blanchard Jerrold appeared in that journal 
on the 11th of February, 1881:— 
“ Sir, —I should like to add a few words to your admirable article on 
that ‘ true Priest of Nature,’ the author of a ‘ Century of Birds from 
the Himalayas,’ and so much other work of the highest value. The 
Priest of Nature was assisted by a devoted Priestess. The loving, 
skilful hands of Mrs. Gould were at work, painting the birds which she 
and her husband so passionately studied together, through trials and 
perils innumerable, for many a long year. There are those alive who 
