Birds of South Africa 



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for my present purpose to say, that I do not believe that lie ever crossed the 

 Orange river, and procured this bird (Pycnonotus cafer) there. He describes in 

 his travels how he was floated across the swollen river, and his chase after the 

 giraffe. I question much if this account is true. There was living at Camies- 

 berg, within the last few years, an aged woman named Van Zyl, who related to 

 my informant that she well remembered the kleine Franschman (little French- 

 man), as she called him ; that during his stay in that part of the country he 

 lodged entirely at her house ; and that he never crossed the Orange river, being 

 too much of a coward to do so. When told that he stated that he shot the 

 giraffe, she scouted the idea, and declared that the skin which he took away 

 was brought piece-meal from the opposite side of the river by his Hottentots. 

 Mrs Van Zyl was a large raw-boned woman, who stood upwards of six feet 

 and usually wound up her narrative concerning Le Vaillant by laughingly 

 relating how she had horsewhipped the ' little Frenchman ' for attempting to 

 be somewhat too free with her." 



After reading the repeated exposures of Le Vaillant's mendacity, 

 and wild flights of imagination brought to notice by Mr Layard, it 

 is impossible to have any respect for his statements, and it is only 

 right that his true character should be appreciated. Almost the 

 first in his particular field of observation, at a time when little was 

 known of the natural productions of South Africa, there was 

 sufficient admixture of truth in his elaborate work on the birds of 

 that part of the world to lend credit to his numerous unfounded 

 assertions. It may not be generally known that he was sent to 

 South Africa as a paid collector of objects of natural history by 

 the father of the late venerable Professor Temminck of Leyden. 

 Mr Layard also supplies a reminiscence of a naturalist of a very 

 different stamp, the late W. Swainson, of whose writings and 

 theoretic notions about classification, at one time so popular and 

 much canvassed, we hear very little now. They have been pretty 

 well consigned to oblivion. It appears that much of his property 

 was wrecked in Table Bay, in the ship that should have carried 

 his effects to New Zealand. " Several of his books were recovered 

 and bought up by a number of gentlemen who admired his talents, 

 and he was informed that they would be forwarded to him if he 

 would indicate his address. This he never cared to do, and the 

 books remained here (in Cape-Town). Of them, the South 

 African Museum has Temminck's ' Planches Colorie'es,' Le 

 Vaillant's ' Oiseaux d'Afrique,' the first volume of his ' Histoire 

 Naturelle d'Oiseaux Nouveaux de I'Amerique et des Indes,' and 

 Wilson's 'American Ornithology.' They contain many curious 

 manuscript notes on the plates and margin, all bearing on his 

 ideas of the affinity of species." So writes Mr Layard, and we 



