452 WILLIAM THALBITZER. 
as PURCHAS, HAKLUYT, FROBISHER, Davis, DE Porncy, Les Relations 
des Jesuites, CHARLEVOIX, LAHONTAN, etc. etc., I should undoubtedly 
have rendered myself liable to criticism. Now, when I have not neglected 
this, Hr. THOMSEN is pleased to criticise me for not having taken enough. 
He himself appears to have had plenty of time in his museum for a 
thorough study of my sources here, and the results of his industry make 
themselves apparent, as usual, in the “correction of errors”. 
— [Not even printer’s errors are beneath his notice; evidently, all 
is fish that comes to his net. I do not in the least grudge him this pitiful 
sport; yet I confess I could have wished for a critic better able to dis- 
tinguish between the trifling and the essential. 
Hr. THOMSEN’s zeal leads him at times to take advantages of such 
faults as are patently due to a slip of the pen or even, as indicated, to 
an oversight in the reading of the proofs. I may here at once point out 
one or two such instances, since they serve to illustrate his method. 
The placing of a (“sic”) after a printer’s error whereby “15” appears 
instead of the obvious “it” might almost seem to be meant in jest (vid. 
his paper р. 419,5). And surely only wilful misunderstanding could fail 
to see that the two numbers 561 and 562 in my list of ethnographical 
collections р. 744,, are а mere typographical slip for 561 and 56%. To 
class them among “scientific errors”, as he does p. 41278, is misleading. 
The same, with some modification, applies to my ekalugsaa from OLEA- 
RIUS (cf. p. 467 here), and the date 1789 for 1689 (cf. p. 478). Such er- 
rors are always regrettable, but there are few large works in which none 
such can be found. 
Even Hr. THOMSEN’s own paper is not free from errors of this sort, 
more or less important; I will not, however, here waste space on any 
lengthy list, but content myself with the following observations: 
In quoting my work, Hr. THOMSEN now and again introduces, on 
his own account, printer’s errors or mistakes which do not appear there 
at all, and on the single occasion when he cites the title of my work 
(the real object of his criticisms!) that title is rendered meaningless by 
the omission of the last word. I must be permitted here to correct the 
following erroneous quotations in Hr. THOMSEN’s paper: 
Error. Amendment. 
р. 382note 2 “the East Greenland” “the East Greenland Natives” 
- 4132 “,...a snow beater...” “...a snow beater?...” 
- 4131617 “.... (or toy harpoons?)..“... (of toy harpoons?)...” 
- 41/4" “Vantissard Island” “Vansittard Island” 
= 4205 “anv. Admit” “inv. Amd. 17” 
Оп р. 417, Hr. Тномзвх gives a long passage from my book, 
tricked out with arbitrary spacing at various points; apparently with 
‘the air of extracting some amusement from the text thus deformed 
