3-009-041 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The International Exhibition: "Linnets Defending their Nest against a Dormouse", modelled in wax by A. Cain, 1862. 'The title of this most elaborate and delicately-executed model suggests a furious and perhaps prolonged struggle between antagonists curiously but not very unequally matched...Our linnet and common wild species of dormouse are respectively among the smallest of birds and quadrupeds...The action of the little creatures is given with immense spirit. The great loir, crouching and persistent, has broken down one side of the nest and already cracked two or three eggs; but the so-called linnets, especially the female, will not be scared away, but flutter over and cling to it, and with all the feathers of their polls on end, and screaming from their little throats, usually so melodious, and attacking with their sharp little beaks the heartless thief, defend it to the last extremity. The delicacy and minuteness of the work, and the truth of the textural imitation, are, however, still more surprising. The feathers of the little birds, the coat of the loir, every twig and filament of the nest, and every ramification of fibre in the ivy, are imitated with marvellous accuracy'. From "Illustrated London News", 1862.