Birds has entered upon a new year with the satisfaction of having
pleased its readers as well as having rendered actual service to the
cause of education, ornithological literature and art. Nature with her
usual prodigality has scattered thousands of rare and attractive birds
throughout the world, and of these the editor of BIRDS selects the most
interesting species, the loveliest forms and the richest plumage for
preservation by means of magnificent illustrations, obtained through
the expensive process of color photography. A unique treatment of text
makes the magazine interesting and instructive to old and young alike.
The people of this locality are noted for being lovers of birds and
students of nature, and it has given the three greatest naturalists the
world has ever known. This is the native heath of Audubon and Robert
Dale Owen. Mr. S. G. Evans, the well-known dry goods merchant of this
city, has a very fine and complete set of Audubon's birds. All this
fills our eyes to think what the world lost in the death of William
Hamilton Gibson. He made all life seem related to our lives, all being
to appear one substance, all to be worthy of interest, sympathy, love,
and reverence. There are strange and beautiful stories told of his
power to attract and handle the shyest creatures. Once, it is said,
he went to a public library in Brooklyn to make a sketch of some rare
butterfly, and had found a book of plates from which he was studying
his subject, when, lo! there floated into the great room one of the
very specimens he desired to picture, fluttered down upon the open
page, and at last rested with throbbing wings beside its own portrait.
On one election day, Mr. Gibson went to vote, and as he was studying
his ticket, there came in at the open door, no one knew whence, a stray
pigeon, which flew at once to him and perched upon his shoulder. He
caressed it in his tender fashion, and murmured to it, and then it flew
away, no one knew whither. Once, too, as he sat upon his veranda at The
Sumacs, his country home in Connecticut, describing to a visitor the
peculiar markings upon the wings of a certain song-bird, he suddenly
arose, stepped to a bush upon the lawn, and coaxed into his hand the
very bird of which he was talking, and which he brought to show to
his astonished guest. This sympathy with the world of life outside of
man fills his text and his illustrations to overflowing.--_Evansville
(Ind.) Courier._