In the days when colour printing was extremely expensive, the Avicultural Society had special appeals for funds to support the appearance in Avicultural Magazine of the occasional colour plate. A well-known bird artist was then commissioned. Although the whole run of the Society’s magazines can be found online, the plates rarely see the light of day. Therefore I decided to show one, now and again, on this site. This is the second in the series.
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Cabot’s Tragopan (Tragopan caboti) is from the mountains of south-eastern China. It was named in 1857 by John Gould for Samuel Cabot (1815-1885) of Boston, USA, who was a very wealthy ornithologist as well as a physician and surgeon. Cabot had leant Gould his specimen. In the wild, their habitat has become extremely fragmented and the bird is classified as ‘Vulnerable’ by IUCN, only one step from ‘Endangered’.
The artist was John Cyril Harrison (1898-1985). For most of his life he lived in Norfolk. He trained at the Slade after the First World War and became well known for his wildlife paintings, especially birds. He was a regular visitor to Scotland, parts of Africa and Iceland.
The short article accompanying this plate was written by Philip Wayre (1921-2014) who in 1959 had founded the Ornamental Pheasant Trust. He also had a small zoo at Great Witchingham, the Norfolk Wildlife Park. He was involved with a number of charities concerned with wildlife including the Otter Trust and what is now the Philip Wayre Upland Trust. Given Philip Wayre’s activities in Norfolk I think it is no coincidence that the artist was Harrison. Wayre described the breeding of birds he had imported from China in 1960 in his attempt to maintain a captive breeding population in Britain. Inbreeding was—and apparently still is—a major problem with captive populations from a small number of founders.
Avicultural Magazine 69, 1963
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