British Birds - handcoloured prints by the Reverend Francis Orpen Morris (1870)

We've just added to our catalogue a near-complete set of 339 hand coloured prints from Morris's "A History of British Birds" (1870). These fabulous decorative prints depict all the bird species native to 19th century Britain. We also have an extensive stock of prints from Morris's "Nests and Eggs of British Birds" (1896).

Francis Orpen Morris (1810-1893) was an Irish clergyman, notable as "parson-naturalist" (ornithologist and entomologist) and as the author of many children's books and books on natural history and heritage buildings. He was a pioneer of the movement to protect birds from the plume trade and was a co-founder of the Plumage League. By all accounts he was a difficult and irascible character. He was an anti-feminist and loathed any killing of wildlife. He challenged the theory of evolution as expounded in Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, and authored of anti-Darwinian pamphlets. He rejected common descent and natural selection, which he argued were unsupported by evidence. He questioned why proponents of Darwinism were unable to answer such questions as "by what act of natural selection was the pouch of the camel formed" and "how are the electric organs in fishes accounted for by natural selection."

You can view all the prints we have available from both of the above here.