X PREFACE 



criticisms are superficial. There is a good reason for 

 this. It is that these journahsts know well that any 

 attempts to rebut my statements will lead to a con- 

 troversy in which they cannot but be worsted because 

 the facts are against them. 



If what I say is incorrect my reviewers now have an 

 excellent opportunity to demonstrate this. 



Lest these have recourse to the unfaihng resort of the 

 defeated Darwinian or Wallaceian — the argument of 

 ignorance, lest they say that it is only owing to their 

 insufficient knowledge of Indian birds that they cannot 

 answer me, let me assert that what I say of Indian birds 

 is equally true of British birds. 



I assert with confidence that the colouring of nine 

 out of ten birds has some feature which the theories 

 attacked by me cannot account for. 



" Hypotheses," wrote Huxley, " are not ends but 

 means. . . . The most useful of servants to the man of 

 science, they are the worst of masters, and when the 

 establishment of the hypotheses comes the end, and fact 

 is attended to only so far as it suits the ' Idee/ science 

 has no longer anything to do with the business." 



The hypotheses which I decline to accept have 

 become the masters of many zoologists who are busily 

 occupied in distorting facts which do not coincide with 

 theory. 



It is not very long since an English scientific paper 

 published an article entitled " What have ornitholo- 



