Beautiful Birds

Abstract

MR. SELOUS' volume, in spite of its pleasant-looking green cover, numerous though indifferent plates, and text cheerfully varied with italics, is in reality no more than an unduly swollen tract. It is necessary to say this at once, and with emphasis, lest the unwary buyer of bird books should add this volume to his library under the impression that he was adding a useful and chatty account of humming-birds and birds of paradise. The volume is, in fact, an example of what is known in the animal world as “aggressive mimicry.” Under the guise of a pleasing discourse upon some of the more striking among many beautiful birds, the author really provides the public with not much more than a simple attack upon the wearing of birds' plumes by ladies. We have not the least objection to Mr. Selous' views in this matter, or to the expression of them. But he might surely have found one of those numerous journals which delight in denunciatory declamation rather than in adherence to frigid fact, and into its sympathetic columns have poured his feelings of horror at feminine inhumanity. Then no one would have been deceived about the matter, as some possibly may be. Mr. Selous builds upon a minimum of zoological fact a large super structure of curiously agitated, almost hysterical, ethics. The book is, in its form, addressed to a hypothetical and female infant of tender years who is urged to persecute her mother and female relatives generally until they promise never to wear birds' feathers in their hats, as, for instance—“You must remind her of it from time to time (‘remember mother you promised’), when you hear her talking about getting a new hat. And when you have made her promise about herself then you must make her promise never to let you wear a hat of that sort…. And if you have a sister very much older than yourself, &c, &c.“ With such observations the chapters are liberally sown and nearly invariably conclude; it is, moreover, at least once added that the mother and sisters in question had better read this particular volume. We sincerely hope that they won't take this broad and business-like hint; for even from the point of view of a “humani-tarian” (we must use inverted commas as there is no necessary connection between the use and meaning of this term) Mr. Selous is unworthy of praise. Why should he select the “beautiful birds” only, and by implication condone the massacre of birds that have not that advantage?