Mr. Swainsbn on New Australasian Birds. 465 



collected during the late survey of a tract hitherto but little 

 kuown, were brought home a few months ago ; and have fallen 



under my inspection through the kindness of Brogden, 



Esq. M.P. iu whose possession they now are. A few others have 

 been presented to me by my friend Baron Field, Esq. who has 

 recently returned from the same country, and from whom the 

 public may soon expect some valuable information on the geogra- 

 phical and geological features of those distant regions. 



In laying before the scientific world the result of my observa- 

 tions on these new additions to our Australasian Fauna, I trust 

 the example will be followed by other British Naturalists, and 

 that they will be induced to seize every opportunity of recording 

 those undescribed animals, in every department of Zoology, which 

 have been discovered by themselves, or are continually arriving 

 from our distant colonies. In a general point of view, it matters 

 little who are the reapers employed to gather in the harvest which 

 Nature every where opens to us. But I think it is a national 

 reproach to suffer our Continental neighbours to come over, and 

 draw the materials for their valuable works, from our own public 

 and private Museums. To what an extent tliis has been done 

 need not be told. Yet this procrastination on our part, in most 

 cases, springs from a laudable, though erroneous motive. We aim 

 at a point of perfection never to be attained. Year after year we 

 keep back that knowledge we have already acquired, iu the hopes 

 of rendering it more perfect. New discoveries arise, yet we wait 

 for more. Meanwhile the stream of life is slowly passing from us; 

 we find those discoveries, on which we had built our future fame, 

 anticipated by contemporaries. Our plans gradually become too 

 vast for execution ; until, discontented and disheartened, we relin- 

 quish them altogether ; and discover, too late, the futility of 

 aiming at that perfection which belongs only to beings of a superior 

 order. 



Forcibly impressed with this conviction, I shall make no apo- 

 logy on this, or any future occasion, for laying before the readers 

 of this Journal detached descriptions, or isolated remarks on such 

 new objects as may come before me ; im[»erfect as these observa- 

 tions may be, they may stimulate the inquiricb of others ; and, at 



