'On a Sunshine Holyday', by the Amateur Angler [Signing Himself E.M.]. (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1897. Excerpt: ... neither time nor opportunity for studying nature beyond what is left of it in a pretty but cityhaunted suburban garden. The late Sir Richard Owen was able, owing to his great genius and life-long experience, to construct a whole antediluvian animal of megatherium dimensions from a single bone or tooth. In like manner have I been called upon to construct a bird from a few feathers. A good lady, who had done me the honour of reading my book, sent me not long ago, from the neighbourhood of Abergavenny, a small shattered wing of a bird, which her cat had killed and mangled in her garden. She had never seen a bird like it, and she particularly wished me to tell her what it was. Luckily--by a mere fluke, as it were--I have been able to reconstruct this bird from its few feathers, and to furnish the lady with a perfect description of it. A friend staying with me, of a very observant nature, inquiring mind, and retentive memory, told me that she had seen, only a few days ago, a bird of exactly similar plumage hung up by its beak in a poulterer's shop. She inquired what the bird was; it was there clearly for show rather than for gastronomic purposes; she was told that it was a woodpecker. Now, if there is one bird of the rarer kind that I thought I remembered better than any other, it is a woodpecker. I have seen lots of them in the woods and orchards on the old farm in the days of old, and I am quite sure that I have never seen one since; but surely, unless my memory has sadly played me false, all my woodpeckers were green, with a bit of red on their heads, and three times the size of the bird which this wing represents, and which is not much larger than a sparrow's wing, and it is striped black and white. This, of course, will sufficiently show the extent of my ...