HENRY SEEBOHM 205 



If Seebohm had been content with his fine record as 

 a traveller and collector, all would have been well, but 

 he ventured without a sufficient equipment into the 

 thorny questions of classification, and, after perpetrating 

 some rather glaring inaccuracies, he inevitably fell foul 

 of Newton. 



It is not so much that Seebohm is no scholar, but it 

 is his way of making reckless assertions that is so repre- 

 hensible. You may remember in the Ibis for July last 

 he launched out into a tirade against people in general 

 for having neglected Pallas's " Zoographia," concerning 

 which he propounded a long story absolutely without 

 truth and (as I cannot but believe) wholly of his own 

 invention. When I told him, as I did privately, how 

 the matter stood, and lent him Von Baer's report (of 

 which he had never heard), he made a most shuffling 

 attempt in the next number to get out of the scrape. 

 It is no part of my business to set other people right or 

 show up their " blunders " (his own favourite word), so 

 long as they keep clear of me ; and as this matter did 

 not in any way concern me, I let him alone. When, 

 however, it came to a fresh attack on me based on a 

 mare's nest discovery, I thought it time to notice it.* 



He is a man who, having made a lot of money at 

 Sheffield, has retired from business, and taken up 

 Ornithology. He has great force of character and is a 

 fluent speaker, qualities which have helped him in the 

 world and dispose some people to think him a great man. 

 But his writings show him not to be clear-headed or 

 logical. I knew him to be shallow and ignorant as 

 regards Ornithological literature, but until last week I 

 had given him credit for knowing birds when he saw 

 them. To my great surprise my eyes were opened. I 

 was going to London, and, just before starting, there 

 arrived a small box of bird skins from Portugal which 

 the sender asked me to determine for him. As I knew 



* Letter to Col. H. W. Feilden, March 16, 1883. 



