Abstract
WHETHER the beautifully illustrated work on the same subject by the late Lord Lilford leaves room for the present volume and its predecessor, is a question for the publisher rather than for the reviewer to answer; but, if the stream of books on the subject be any criterion, the appetite of the British public for natural histories of the avifauna of their own country seems insatiable. Apart from all this, the present work, of which the first volume was issued in 1897, has high claims on the consideration of the public, the large size (4to.) of the paper on which they are printed permitting the plates to be on a scale of greater magnitude than in the work above-mentioned, while their excellence from an artistic point of view, as well as their apparent fidelity to nature, leaves little or nothing to be desired from the point of view of the connoisseur in animal painting. In too many instances we have either an inartistic but truthful portrait of the creature depicted, or an artistic picture in which details of coloration are sacrificed to the general effect; but in the present case, the happy mean appears to have been attained in these respects. The plates are signed with the initials “C. W. W.,” but we are told in the preface that the colouring has been done by the daughters of Dr. Bowdler Sharpe, whose training is a sufficient guarantee for its accuracy.
British Birds; with some Notes in reference to their Plumage.
By C. W. Wyatt. Coloured Illustrations. (London: William Wesley and Son, 1899.)
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L., R. British Birds; with some Notes in reference to their Plumage . Nature 62, 100 (1900). https://doi.org/10.1038/062100a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/062100a0