14 INTRODUCTION. 



labours and researches as he was, and it is not justifiable for any 

 writer, however gigantic in mental capacity, thus to treat the 

 labours of his predecessors rowing in the same boat. 



He is always raving about " previous authors," " Cockney 

 sportsmen," "parlour naturalists," "museums," and "dried 

 skins " of birds. But I am much mistaken if these have not 

 constituted the chief materials from which his own voluminous 

 leaves have been culled. One instance more and I have done 

 sympathizing with the " effete and extinct works " of such fine 

 old authors as Linnseus and Cuvier, as well as the " carpet 

 naturalists " of modern times, who had the audacity to publish 

 their works contrary to the more correct system of Dr 

 Macgillivray. Some poor fellow had the temerity to draw a 

 distant comparison between the snout of a nasua and the bill of 

 the avocetta ; the proboscis of an elephant and the bill of a 

 snipe ; the horn of a Highland bullock and a game-cock's spur, 

 when our learned friend was down upon him like a cartload of 

 bricks. 



He grandiloquently asks — " Is it not cruel, after all, to shoot 

 birds for mere sport 1 " Then answers his own query — " Per- 

 haps it is so. Some kill birds for food ; and, I suppose, they do 

 right. Others slaughter them to make money ; and, possibly, 

 they, too, are blameless. Some shoot for study, and some to 

 supply the naturalists and the museum with specimens. Con- 

 sider what would become of us if we had no skins. All the 

 Binary, Ternary, and Quinary arrangements ; the rank and file 

 extensions ; the Circular, Inosculant, Anatomising, Normal, and 

 Aberrant delineations would never have existed had there been 

 no skins to arrange on the carpet. Without skins for comparison 

 how could the marvellous discovery have been made that the 

 ' snout of a nasua and the avocetta were as like as possible, con- 

 sidering that one is a quadruped and the other a bird 1 ' The 

 proboscis of an elephant you could hardly conceive to be the 

 counterpart of a snipe's bill, nor the horn of a Highland bullock 

 that of a game-cock's spur ; nor can I comprehend how a heavy, 

 short-winged black grouse should ' represent, in its own circle, r 

 the light aerial long pinioned swallow, merely because both have a 

 forked tail. But a real systematist thinks no more of swallowing a 

 palpable absurdity than a boa constrictor does of engulphing a 

 curly-headed nigger — poor fellow ! " No doubt the worthy 

 Doctor thought this a marvellous stroke of satire against the 

 well-meaning, but igorant, " systematiser," who studied " all his 

 Natural History from dried skins on a carpet," and " swallowed 



