was prepared with a charming simplicity of detail, the few dried
ferns and sober surroundings serving as a foil to the glittering
plumage of th e birds themselves. So long as these birds were in
Gould’s possession th e cases were placed in a large room with lig h t
coming from above them, and each bird was carefully set a t the
angle th a t would best display tb e metallic lustre of its plumage,
producing th u s separately and collectively a fine effect of colour.
I t is much to be regretted th a t in th e National Museum no suitable
space is available where they can be shown to equal advantage. When
the season was over 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 th e exhibition), and he
fu rth e r gained the names of seventy-two subscribers to his ‘ Monograph
of th e Humming-Birds,’ including nearly all th e crowned heads of
Europe. I n th e year 1849 the ‘Monograph of the Trochilidce’. was
commenced, and in 1850 another great work, namely th e ‘ Birds of Asia,’
and a very interesting I M onograph of the Odontophorinae, or Partridges
of America,’ complete in a single folio volume, was issued. In 1851
th e first p a rt of the Supplement to th e Birds of Australia ’ was
published, and this was finished in 1869. I n 1854 appeared the second
edition of his ‘ M onograph of the Ramphastidce ’ ; and he was occupied
with the different works above mentioned until 1861, when the ‘ Monograph
of the Humming-Birds ’ was finished. I n the ensuing year Gould
commenced his celebrated work on the ‘Birds of Great Britain,’ and
ju s t as he had invested the Humming-Birds with their n a tu ra l 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 th e nestlings of the rarer species, while the vast majority
of the plates were drawn from freshly killed specimens, and the pictures
of th e nests were taken from the objects themselves. Such beautiful
illustrations as those of the ‘Birds of Great B rita in ’ scarcely existed
before and are not likely to be surpassed. The rough sketches were
always designed by the author himself, and were drawn on stone-
by Mr. H a rt, who also made a finished painting of th e whole of the
plates of the ‘ Birds of Great B ritain ’ (excepting th e few done by
Mr. Wolf) before they were p u t on stone. Mr. H a rt commenced
working for Mr. Gould in the' summer of 1851, making th e patterns
for the ‘H umming-Birds’ and colouring the metallic portions of
the plates. H e commenced to draw the plates on stone from the
twenty-second p a rt of th e ‘Birds of Great Brita in ,’ and continued
to do so till all th e works were completed.
I t was about the year 1862 th a t I myself first became acquainted
with Mr. Gould, when I was a boy careering about tb e neighbourhood
of Cookham in search of birds. H e was a frequent visitor to the
pleasant little Berkshire village, which was not th en th e crowded
resort of boating men th a t it is now. None of th e notices of Gould’s
life which I have seen have referred to his prowess as a fisherman;
bu t in my young days his name was in every one’s mouth whenever
an unusually big fisb was known to be feeding in our neighbourhood.
When the local fishermen had tried in vain to catch it, they used to
say: “ Well! we shall have to leave it till Mr. Gould comes down.”
And in after years, when he was an invalid, many is th e story he
has told me of the capture of some of his best tro u t in th e Thames.
One particularly fine fish which he caught off Formosa was painted for
him by Mr. H a rt, and the picture used to hang over the sideboard in his
dining-room. His usual habit, on receiving information as to the time
when th e fish used to rise and feed, was to come down for several
evenings in succession and verify for himself th e time of feeding, and
when assured of the fact he brought his tackle and seldom failed to
land the trout. The particular fish whose po rtra it I have often seen
in the dining-room a t Charlotte Street was known to frequent the