Dr. Heineken on Fringilla Canaria, ¥c. 73 
that his having made a distinct species of it is so readily accounted for, by 
his having no doubt about the legitimacy of its representative. If ‘those 
« of authority” in such matters admit that I have established my point, 
it follows that the Linnean Fring. Canaria must be expunged, and the 
Fring. butyracea ‘substituted for it. If they do not, I shall only mutter 
for my inward satisfaction, “‘ bastards and else,’’ over their Catalogue, 
and rest perfectly satisfied with having at all events unmade a 
Fring. Canaria by converting it into a Fring. butyracea; for the 
identity of the two species, call them by what name you will, is quite 
beyond all cavil. That the error has existed so long is owing partly to 
the injudicious preference too frequently given to bulky, faithless “¢ trans- 
lations,’ “* compilations,” and ‘improvements,’ forsooth! over ori- 
ginal works, Gmelin’s 13th Edition of Linnzus, as it is called, I have 
had the good fortune never to be burdened with, but in an evil hour a 
kind friend bestowed upon me the seven ponderous tomes of that kindred 
spirit, Turton. In this work, Vol. I, p. 559, the habitat is altered from 
«© Madeira’’ to “ India,’ and it is added, ‘* Bill and legs brown, 44 
“ inches long, sings finely.’’ All this is done without one word in 
explanation. Anact of forgery* on an illustrious name, is, in fact, 
list might be made; the following, however, almost as extensively spread as 
man himself, are unknown to us :---the Raven, Crow, Cuckoo, Daw, Magpie, 
Sparrow (both house and hedge), Pheasant, Thrush, Sky-lark, and Nightingale. 
There are several others which do not occur to me at the moment, 
* Whoever translates or revises an original work, and does not honestly 
point out every deviation from the text; and whatever compiler introduces, or 
alters, a word in a sentence marked as a quotation; is guilty of a literary fraud. 
In the last Number (XVI.) of the Zoological Journal, Mr. Bennett has restored 
a Linnean species (Mus Barbarus), which either Gmelin’s conceit or his in- 
stinctive propensity towards the erroneous (an obliquity by no means unusual 
with this sort of gentry) had for years excluded. 
The first time I opened Mr. Starke’s work, was at the Anobium pertinaa, 
which he gives as Latreille’s, putting at the end of the description (which is 
between inverted commas) “ Lat, Gen. 1, 276.”” Now the “ Genera” (Ed. 1806.) 
does not contain a description of the Anob. pertinaw: neither, to prevent all 
_ subterfuge, is it a correct quotation of any description of any Anobium, in any 
of Latreille’s works. In birds too, (these occurred accidentally, for I have 
not examined half a dozen in the two volumes,) that of the Anthus rufescens, 
