The Bird World- Described with Pen & Pencil

Hardback with red cloth with heavy gilt outline, decoration and gilt blocking, and gilt lettering to spine. All edges gilded.

Perhaps there is no subject on which a writer can discourse with greater certainty of carrying with him the sympathies of his readers than the Bird. So popular with all of us is this member of the animal creation, that we never seem to weary of details of its habits, of illustrations of its mode of life.

Whether we select a type famous for the swiftness and gracefulness of its flight, or for the beauty and elegance of its plumage, or for its intelligence  and its familiarity with man, we find our interest equally excited, and gladly give our attention to every particular that can be gathered about it. In our songs, in our fables, in our legends, in our proverbs, the Bird has conspicuous share. Our groves and woodlands would seem dull without its presence. What would spring be without the swallow, or winter without the robin!

How dreary a mountain lake without its snow-white swans, and the rocky cliffs of the islands without the dusky wings of the sea-birds! How much of beauty the world would lose if deprived of its humming-birds and its birds of paradise! Would there not be a blank in our poetry without the joyous morning strain of the skylark or the full rich night-song of the nightingale?

SOURCE: W.H. Davenport Adams.

Half Title with ownership detail, Title, Preface, Contents- The Bird as a Indivdual- The Movements of the Bird- Intelligence of the Bird- The Habitat of the Birds-Bird Architecture, List of Illustrations.xii plus 464 pages text and index. Drawn by H.Giacomelli, With numerous supporting engravings by Sargent, Berveiller, Rouget, Meaulle, Harral, Whymper, Jonnard, Dalziel, Morison.

Fine