232 LANGUAGES AND WORDS 



contained many of great rarity, and his purchases were 

 few. The University and Philosophical Libraries pro- 

 vided him with most of the books he wanted, and there 

 were few treating even remotely of Natural History that 

 did not eventually find their way to him. There was 

 usually something to be learnt from them, but there were 

 occasions when he found that his hours had been wasted 

 and then he did not hesitate to trample on the luckless 

 author. 



I have been wasting 3 or 4 days looking over an essay 

 by a very great German classic on the Fauna of the early 

 Roman writers. I had hoped to have found a great many 

 allusions to birds and other animals all carefully set 

 forth, but to my disappointment there is nothing of the 

 sort, and the author avoids any serious difficulty. I 

 believe the authorities here have gone so far as to say 

 they will print this, but I should not advise it. You 

 may judge what the book is like when the author wants 

 to make out that the Napun, given by Pliny as an 

 Ethiopian name of the Giraffe, is the Okapi ! As if the 

 recondite resemblances between these two animals was 

 plainly visible to every eye, instead of being reserved for 

 those who are comparative osteologists ! People like 

 this ought to be shut up in Tolbooths or such-like places, 

 where the harmlessly silly may live their lives without 

 bothering others with their nonsense.* 



His varied learning and his accurate memory were 

 constantly being called upon in the most diverse direc- 

 tions and were seldom found wanting. At a meeting of 

 " The Family," an old-fashioned University dining-club, 

 somebody raised the question of the ' No Snakes in 

 Iceland " story. One member present remembered the 

 reference to it in Boswell,f but it was Newton who knew 



* Letter to J. A. Harvie-Brown, March 20, 1900. 



f " Langton said very well to me afterwards, that he could repeat 

 Johnson's conversation before dinner, as Johnson said that he could repeat 



