rofile is the most essential;
and for the falcons and gulls, the flying _plan_,--the outline of the
bird, as it would be seen looking down on it, when its wings were
full-spread.

Then, in connection with these general outlines, we want systematic
plan and profile of the foot and head; but since we can't have
everything at once, let us say the plan of the foot, and profile of the
head, quite accurately given; and for every bird consistently, and to
scale.

Profile and plan in outline; then, at least the _head_ in light and
shade, from life, so as to give the expression of the eye. Fallacious,
this latter, often, as an indication of character; but deeply
significant of habit and power: thus the projecting, full, bead, which
enables the smaller birds to see the smallest insect or grain with good
in it, gives them much of their bright and often arch expression; while
the flattened iris under the beetling brow of the falcons,--projecting,
not in frown, but as roof, to shade the eye from interfering
skylight,--gives them their apparently threatening and ominous gaze;
the iris itself often wide and pale, showing as a lurid saturnine ring
under the shadow of the brow plumes.

87. I speak of things that are to be: very assuredly they will be done,
some day--not far off, by painters educated as gentlemen, in the
strictest sense--working for love and truth, and not for lust and gold.
Much has already been done by good and earnest draughtsmen, who yet had
not received the higher painter's education, which would have enabled
them to see the bird in the greater lights and laws of its form. It is
only here and there, by Duerer, Holbein, Carpaccio, or other such men,
that we get a living bird rightly drawn;[18] but we may be greatly
thankful for the unspared labor, and attentive skill, with which many
illustrations of ornithology have been produced within the last seventy
or eighty years. Far beyond rivalship among them, stands Le Vaillant's
monograph, or dualgraph, on the Birds of Paradise, and Jays: its
plates, exquisitely engraved, and colored with unwearying care by hand,
are insuperable in plume-texture, hue, and action,--spoiled in effect,
unhappily, by the vulgar boughs for sustentation. Next, ranks the
recently issued history of the birds of Lombardy; the lithographs by
Herr Oscar Dressler, superb, but the coloring (chromo-lithotint) poor:
and then, the self-taught, but in some qualities greatly to be
respected, art of Mr.