REVIEWEES 243 



The lot of rubbishy naturalists we have about is 

 Very great, and the worst of it is that the people of this 

 country like a low class of Natural History writing 

 better than a high one. Look at the way the most 

 wretched books sell, and the silly style in which they 

 are reviewed ! Editors of newspapers seem to think 

 anybody capable of reviewing a Natural History book, 

 or of writing a Natural History article. If occasionally 

 a competent critic does speak his mind, he is put down 

 as ill-natured or as having some private spite.* 



Natural History reviewing is one of the lost arts 

 in this country. They still practise it rather well in 

 America, for the reviewers there seem to take some 

 little trouble to learn what the author has to say. 

 Here a man only scribbles off a lot of platitudes, or 

 if he wants to be nasty tells his readers what he thinks 

 the author ought to have said.f 



In spite of his fundamental devotion to accuracy, 

 he was equally cautious in assertion, and he would 

 never, if it could be avoided, allow himself to be drawn 

 into controversy. He was invited to contribute to a 

 well-worn discussion about the hibernation of the 

 Cuckoo. 



the Cuckow, the Cuckow ! What a bird that is ! 

 I do not completely " endorse " (lingua Americana) 

 Baldamus, because it is manifest that his statement is 

 not " universally " but only *' approximately" true, and 

 this is enough. Quod scripsi scripsi, and Newman 

 means to reprint my Nature article in the Zoologist. 



1 have not the slightest wish to take part in a con- 

 troversy which promises now, as it proved to be before, 

 to be productive of much acerbity ; for the editor of 

 Nature three years and more ago sent me many letters 

 which he had received but never printed, and the 



* Letter to J. A. Harvie- Brown, October 23, 1887. 

 t Letter to T. Southwell, February 27, 1902. 



