Birds Beasts and Fishes of the Norfolk Broadland (Classic Reprint) - Tapa blanda

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Excerpt from Birds Beasts and Fishes of the Norfolk Broadland

These short essays on birds have been written with some trepidation; for, in truth, the more the bird admirer studies and reads the best to be had on the subject, the more he becomes convinced that nearly everything has been said that there is to say upon the habits of British birds; and he will admire in particular the genius of Macgillivray - the best open-air registrar Britain has had - the great powers of observation and love of sport of the late Mr. Booth and of Sir Ralph Payne-Galway, and the compilation, with its literary flavour, of Mr. Seebohm.

After studying the works of these men, he will ask himself if any habits have been overlooked - if there is anything new to record - and he will answer, "Very little;" but still he will allow that a note may be added here and there, and a few suggestions given as to characters and æsthetic worth; for those æsthetic appraisers - the poets - have, as a rule, written the thing they know not.

But when the student of wild-birds comes to look on the barbarous and grotesque plates in these books, his heart is sore, and he sighs for an English Hokusai. He may dwell upon the technical triumph, qua engraver, of Bewick; but he recognises immediately, as can any unlettered wildfowler, that Bewick's birds, as birds, are all caricatures. The monstrous and gaudy decorations of Selby, Gould, Dresser, and the illustrations to Booth's Rough Notes make him gasp for breath; while any marshman can point out the glaring errors of the meretricious and false woodcuts illustrating Yarrell and Saunders. These illustrations to the various editions of British birds only convince me that a master artist has never yet done English birds.

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