272 Lord Wakleu on Mr. Allan Hume's 



and " regardless of the whole family of Fringillida " {t. c. 

 p. 20), its ghastly echos grate on the tortured senses. It is 

 not desired to be too hard on these feeble witicisms, nascent 

 genius deserves encouragement, and their transcription to the 

 pages of ' The Ibis ' is a penalty sufficiently severe. More- 

 over it may be assured that if indulgence in such dreary 

 buffoonery amuses Mr. Hume, or assists in promoting in 

 India, if not the credit, at least the sale, of his periodical. 

 Dr. Finsch will not grudge him the gratification. But de- 

 serving of passing notice is the fact that even when elabo- 

 rating a joke, Mr. Hume cannot avoid being linguistically in- 

 accurate. The German proper name ' Finsch ' and the 

 English substantive ' finch ' are not synonymous. 



In his concluding page {t. c. 28) Mr. Hume asks, " Pray 

 Dr. Finsch how can it advance our real objects one atom, to 

 call a bird that every one recognizes as ' columboides ' by 

 your truly classical name ' peristerodes ' ? " Without pre- 

 suming to divine what Mr. Hume^s "real objects ^^ may be, 

 the simple answer is that peristerodes is right and columboides 

 is wrong. Let the literal meaning of the word columboides 

 be expressed by a combination of English and French, or of 

 English and German words, instead of Latin and Greek, and 

 the grotesque incongruity will become apparent. Thus, 

 Pigeonsemblable, or Pigeonahnlich, parrakeet. But from a 

 writer who, when reviewing the masterly scientific work of a 

 highly educated gentleman, descends to the use of slang terms 

 and repellent vulgarisms, it may be too much to expect any 

 appreciative sympathy with the modes of expression of a re- 

 fined and cultured intellect. 



This assumption is not weakened by the passage now to be 

 quoted, containing the reply of "an unsophisticated field- 

 naturalist here " to the question put by Mr. Hume of " what 

 he thought of these Continental naturalists, with their eternal 

 new names, and the everlasting 'mihV tagged on after them.^' 

 " 'Well^ he said ^I guess the beggars can^t discover any new 

 species of their own, so they have dodged up this classical 

 jim, to legalize their stealing other people^s ' " [t. c. p. 2) . 

 May it be asked, not from motives of mere curiosity, but for 



