204 Proof of certain Statements in the 



was not due to M. DIard ; " that Major Farquhar in reality 

 was its discoverer ; and that a description by him had been 

 laid before the Asiatic Society ; " consists in the plain fact, 

 that all these circumstances are fairly and distinctly stated in 

 M. Diard*s published communication, from which M. Des- 

 marest was then engaged in making extracts. Three distinct 

 portions, indeed, of his own description, as may readily be 

 seen by a comparison between the last two quotations, are 

 borrowed verbatim from the notice of the animal furnished to 

 the Asiatic Society by Major Farquhar himself, and candidly 

 quoted from him, between inverted commas, by M. Diard. My 

 own observation, that M. Desmarest " carefully shielded him- 

 self under an equivocal form of expression," is fully borne 

 out by his confining himself to stating that '' la connoissance 

 de cet animal en France est due a M. Diard," at a time when 

 he well knew that its discovery in its native country was due 

 to another. 



But M. Desmarest did not stop here. In 1828, " forget- 

 ful," as I have said, " of his former caution," he made, in the 

 Dictionnaire des Sciences Natw^elles, the following assertion 

 regarding the animal in question: — "Cet animal, dont la 

 decouverte dans les for^ts de Sumatra et de la presqu'ile de 

 Malacca est due a MM. Duvaucel et Diard." By this remark- 

 able increase in the force of his expressions, M. Desmarest 

 •completely set at nought the candid statement of M. Diard 

 himself, that he saw the tapir of Sumatra, " pour la premiere 

 fois, a Barakpoor," which forms the very commencement of 

 the extract from his letter published in the Histoire Naturelle 

 des Mammiferes, The reader will bear in mind that on this 

 letter both the description in the Mammalogie, and the almost 

 literal repetition of it in the Dictiojinaii^e, are wholly founded. 

 On this part of the case it is quite needless to say more. 



I now turn to that portion of the charge which relates to 

 M. Lesson. The justice of the immediate accusation made 

 iigainst him, of " adopting the dicta of his predecessor [M. 

 Desmarest], with a slight addition of his own," will be at 

 once evident, on a comparison of his description with that of 

 M. Desmarest, quoted above. It is as follows : — 



" Cette espece nouvelle, decouverte par M. Diard, a le 

 corps gros et trapu ; sa trompe a de 7 a 8 pouces ; son pelage 

 est compose de polls courts et ras, de couleur d'un blanc sale, 

 tandis que la tete jusqu'aux epaules, les jambes, et la queue 

 sont d'une couleur noire foncee; le male n'a point de criniere 

 sur le cou. Ce tapir, tres-bien figure par M. F. Cuvier, est 

 Ires-commun dans les for^ts de Sumatra et de la presqu'ile de 

 MalaL" 



