ON THE "FIELD" AND "QUEEN" 145 



those professing to illustrate say, the " maternal 

 affection " of the toad, " whose young are hatched 

 in hundreds as aquatic tadpoles and are never 

 seen (or at any rate recognised) by the parent." 

 Another part of his work on the Field was the 

 reviewing of books on natural history and 

 kindred subjects ; and keen was his criticism 

 and biting was his sarcasm on demonstrable 

 mis-statement, falsely alleged facts or culpable 

 carelessness. 



Fearless in criticism and prodigal of his 

 expression of hatred for wrong-doing or injustice, 

 Tegetmeier was always ready for a fight when 

 occasion arose. But he was never the aggressor 

 without good cause, though when he took up the 

 cudgels he fought to the last. Mr. Horace Cox 

 has said of him that though he earned the nick- 

 name in the office of " Teggy the Fighter," he 

 was universally liked by his colleagues, and was 

 the easiest of men to work with. From two or 

 three manuscripts I found among his papers I 

 gather that occasionally his articles were too 

 strong, or were judged to verge a little too near 

 the line of libel to be printed. For the law of 

 libel, which presses very hardly on honest 

 writers, publishers and printers, is the constant 

 bugbear of a newspaper office. One such 

 evidently unprinted article deals with the extra- 

 ordinary apparent secrecy with which the skin of 

 the then newly-discovered Okapi was withheld 



L 



