Mounted Birds in Illustration
EDITOR 0F BIRD—LURE:
[My Dear Sir—The use of photographs of stufied birds as illustrations in bird-hooks has become an insidious stumbling-block in the path of those you are trying to lead to see the beauty of life in all its forms, and an affliction to the more intimate bird—lovers, especially to such as have a more than usually developed sight sense.
The fact that the average bird-student cannot tell the difference between a photograph of a live bird and one from a skilfully mounted skin is all the more reason against the use of the latter; since he needs protection from deception. In fact, we agree that beginners in all fields should be be fed, mentally, on the purest food.
The camera gives us, as by miracle, Life. manifest in the thousand exquisite details of the bird's appearance, and utterly unachievable save by the creature's spontaneous self-adjustment. And now that we have tasted this feast for the mind and the eye. the possibility of looking unv pained at the mummy picture is gone.
To the seeing few, such pictures are exactly as depressing as similar reproductions of human mummies would be. While the mind may be acquiring from them some facts about birds' markings, etc., the heart is feeling somethng of the horror one would feel at a corpse, Surely the dullest-sighted bird-student must ultimately grow to see their more than corpse»like ugliness. In fact, a dead body has still its anatomical structure, not imitahle by wire and cotton wadding.
Since Nature and Beauty are infinite, a photograph of a live, free animal. or of a true artist's picture of the animal, will grow forever upon the observer: while one of those horrible "fakes" charms, at best, only for an instant, and then lonks steadily worse and worse, as one’s ac- quaintance grows.
Life is so the whole thing for us that, even where a marvel of taxi- dermy cheats us for a moment, the ghastly death fact, once out, spoils all enjoyment.
An artist‘s picture of the same animal drawn from life might be no truer in action, and yet not pain one by the false claim made by the actual surface, the hair, claws. etc., preserved in taxidermy. The lasting effect of the artist's picture upon the beholder would be life: while of the taxi- dermist's, it would he (lent/1. Taxidermy itself, even with all its ugliness, is free at least from deception; since it cannot give motion to its pro‘ ductions, The actual animal would move, the stuffed one does not. But a piclure of the latter has no such guarantee against deception.
of course, if a great figure-painter chanced to have, instead of his human figure gift, a similar one for animal or bird painting. he would
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