74 Dr. Heineken on Fringilla Canaria, &c. 
committed, and one of deliberate deceit on the reader. Whether Gmelin 
has lent his aid in this instance Iam ignorant: it is most probable that 
he has : I trust that the sin rests with him and not with one whose original 
works of late have gone far to secure him from the obloquy which would 
attach to a mere compiler.* The synonyms given by Linneus haye, 
although professing by the usual signs to be a quotation from Temminck, is 
not only abridged, but garbled as far as it goes. It is really high time that 
such things were put a stop to, and the remedy is one of easy and universal 
application. Only let societies, bodies, and individuals of weight in science, 
make and abide by a determination to quote and admit as authorities, original 
works alone, or well-established faithful translations, and our grocers and 
cheesemongers will soon know as much of “ Natural History” as many of its 
would-be expounders. Pretenders are a pest in every thing: in science a curse 
secondary only to the food which nourishes them in the shape of ‘‘ Catechisms,” 
« Pocket-books,” ‘‘ Conversations,’ and, when a great name is to be shewn 
up, “a butterfly on a wheel,” for their edification, volumes of nameless bulk. 
I have objected to the alteration of a “ single word,” and I do so because such 
an alteration in one of Latreille’s descriptions, that of the Calosoma sericeum, for 
example, would convert it (there are other differences, but not in the identical 
description to which I refer) into the Cal. Madere: the one abundant, the 
other, as far as I know, never found here. I would even go so far asa letter, 
and however much it may remind the reader of “ In the name of the prophet 
“ figs!” when he sees “ Elophilus Lat., Helophilus Leach,” in all the circum- 
stance of generic pomp in “‘ Samouelle’s Useful Compendium,” yet if the one 
has thought it worth his while to make so insignificant an addition as an aspi- 
rate, a mere “ windy suspiration of forced breath,” establishing what may be 
called, without offence I hope, “‘ Leach’s genus H.”, the other was quite right 
in marking the distinction. Fabricius has called a butterfly, peculiar to this 
island I believe, Xiphia: were my classical sensitiveness so far to get the bet- 
ter of my common sense, as to induce me to add an s to it, I might be pitied ; 
but if I then quote it as his, I state the thing which is not, and deserve blame: 
besides, too, as ‘‘ to write and read comes by nature,’’ according to honest 
Dogberry, it is but a pitiful thing, after all, to make a display of a natural 
gift at another’s expence. 
* Dr. Heineken is right in his conjecture. Gmelin is answerable for this 
deviation from the original authority,and Dr. Turton, who placed too implicit 
a reliance on one who did not deserve it, has here translated faithfully the so 
called thirteenth edition of the Systema Nature, omitting only the Cape of Good 
Hope as an additional habitat of the Fringilla butyracea.—Ed. 
