IN THE SHETLANDS 153 
its wild self alone? Who wants some man’s ugly 
phiz to be projected upon it? The lion—the eagle— 
the albatross—we see them as we say their names. 
But Jones’s lion—Smith’s eagle—Thomson’s or some- 
body’s albatross, what do these body forth for us? 
Not only the animal itself, but everything it suggests, 
as pertaining to it, that should make its appropriate 
setting in our minds, the sea, the mountain peaks, 
the sand-swept, bush-strewn desert, with the ideas 
belonging to each, the feelings they arouse, the whole 
mental picture in fact, is blurred or cruelly blotted 
out by the obtrusive image of some human face or 
form, which insists upon fitting itself to the irrelevant 
human name, and which, as there is no knowledge to 
guide it, is made up, usually, of the most common- 
place elements. Thus an indistinct prosaic figure of 
our own species is substituted for that of the species 
itself—obsesses us, as it were, and prevents that 
legitimate, placid enjoyment which a naturalist should 
receive through the name alone of any animal. I 
hate these obtrusions. Why, at least, cannot they be 
shrouded in the Latin only—since every species has 
its Latin name? Thus decently buried, the Tem- 
mincks and the Richardsons, the Schalks, Burchells, 
and Grevys, would not so much bother us. But for 
heaven’s sake let the vernacular name of any creature 
have to do with itself only. It is intolerable to want 
to see a bird of paradise—‘in my mind’s eye 
Horatio”—and to have to see Herr Schalk, or a 
zebra and have to see Monsieur Grevy—a shadowy 
