318 HINTS TO ORNITHOLOGISTS. 



self to be led away with the idea that these birds 

 " break through and demolish the hardest wood." 



Give me the man who, after minute examination, 

 has written his account of birds in the country 

 where the birds themselves are found. Give me 

 the man, I don't care of what nation, who has 

 published his ornithological investigations without 

 having first placed them into the scientific hands of 

 those men, who would fain persuade him that no 

 work on ornithology can pass safely through the 

 fiery ordeal of modern criticism, unless it has pre- 

 viously received the polish of their own incom- 

 parable varnish. 



Thus, in days of yore, old Apollo advised his 

 son Phaeton to let his face be well smeared with 

 celestial ointment, in order to make it fireproof, ere 

 he mounted on the box of the solar chariot, 



" Turn pater ora sui, sacro medicamine, nati 

 Contigit, et rapid fecit patientia flammas." 



But, notwithstanding this precaution^ the lad got 

 himself into a sad broil ; and we know not what 

 disasters his folly might have brought upon the 

 world, had not mother Earth bestirred herself, and 

 persuaded Jupiter to stop his wild career. At her 

 urgent entreaties, Jupiter felled him with a thun- 

 derbolt into the river Po, where, I understand, he 

 got pretty well cooled. 



Would that we had a Jupiter here in England, 

 with a birch rod in his hand, to tickle some of our 

 zoological Phaetons! I would willingly act the 

 part of mother earth ; and I would undertake to 



