HENRY DOUBLEDAY, EPPING NATURALIST 317
In June 1833, by the time he was twenty-five years old, he
had already given numerous specimens of birds to the British
Museum and to Saffron Walden Museum, but despite this he
possessed some 216 skins of British Birds. It was in the year of
the Great Exhibition of 1851 that Edward Newman, the editor of
The Zoologist, in that magazine praised Doubleday's skill. He
wrote: —
"In this country the art of bird-stuffing has, in a limited
number of hands, attained great excellence, and the modest
aim of our greatest artists has been to represent repose: in
this no-one has surpassed Henry Doubleday; there is a
great truthfulness in his birds that defies criticism; it con-
sists not in mere smoothness of feather, but in a faithful
version of the figure: he preserves the exact contour; like
Bewick he is a student of Nature and so has transferred
to the inanimate skin, as Bewick to the inanimate wood,
all the attributes of life that can exist without absolute
vitality: and, moreover, he never fails to place a bird on
the centre of gravity, a trait in which he stands almost
alone".
In character Henry was always of a modest and retiring dis-
position, and apart from one or two important occasions published
little, but his private correspondence was prolific, and a great deal
of valuable experience was contained in letters, of which, alas,
most have been lost. Miller-Christy, however, was fortunate
enough to be able to consult about 100 letters which Doubleday
wrote to Dr. Heysham, between the years 1831 and 1846, and of
which Miller-Christy made good use when compiling his book
Birds of Essex.
For eighteen consecutive years Doubleday kept details of
observations at Epping of 25 of our common summer migrants,
and these were from time to time published in The Zoologist or
mentioned privately in letters to Heysham. These records were
included in Miller-Christy's book under the "Table of Observa-
tions on the Arrival of the Summer Migrants at Epping (1828-
1845)". I think readers will agree that this showed remarkable
enthusiasm for a man ...busily engaged on other matters, Miller-
Christy commenting that the record was probably the most com-
plete of its kind ever compiled by one observer. In the same
book, comparable tables for Wrabness were included for the years
1818-1830, compiled by the Rev. Revett Sheppard, and these were
mainly published originally in Transactions of the Linnean
Society.
Most books on ornithology contain references to Doubleday,
his observations on the Hawfinch being particularly valuable;
and Yarrell, in his History of British Birds, based his account
largely on Doubleday's contributions. It is interesting to note
that the Dictionary of National Biography mentions Doubleday's
note on this bird in Jardine's Magazine of Zoology in 1837 as
being probably his first contribution to science, whereas it was