74 Dr. Heineken on Fringilla Canaria, SfC. 



committed, and one of deliberate deceit on the reader. Whether GmeUn 

 has lent his aid in this instance I am ignorant : it is most probable that 

 he has : I trust that the sin rests with him and not with one whose original 

 works of late have gone far to secure him from the obloquy which would 

 attach to a mere compiler.* The synonyms given by Linnaeus have, 



although professing by the usual signs to be a quotation from Temtninck, is 

 not only abridged, but garbled as far as it goes. It is really high time that 

 such things were put a stop to, and the remedy is one of easy and universal 

 application. Only let societies, bodies, and individuals of weight in science, 

 make and abide by a determination to quote and admit as authorities, original 

 works alone, or well-established faithful translations, and our grocers and 

 cheesemongers will soon know as much of " Natural History" as many of its 

 would-be expounders. Pretenders are a pest in every thing: in science a curse 

 secondary only to the food which nourishes them in the shape of " Catechisms," 

 " Pocket-books," " Conversations," and, when a great name is to be shewn 

 up, " a butterfly on a wheel," for their edification, volumes of nameless bulk. 

 I have objected to the alteration of a " single word," and I do so because such 

 an alteration in one of Latreille's descriptions, that of the Calosoma sericeum, for 

 example, would convert it (there are other differences, but not in the identical 

 description to which I refer) into the Cat. Madera: the one abundant, the 

 other, as far as I know, never found here. I would even go so far as a letter, 

 and however much it may remind the reader of " In the name of the prophet 

 " figs!" when he sees " ElophilusXf^^, Helophilus Leach," in all the circum- 

 stance of generic pomp in " Samouelle's Useful Compendium," yet if the one 

 has thought it worth his while to make so insignificant an addition as an aspi- 

 rate, a mere " windy suspiration of forced breath," establishing what may be 

 called, without offence I hope, " Leach's genus H.", the other was quite right 

 in marking the distinction. Fabricius has called a butterfly, peculiar to this 

 island I believe, Xiphia : were my classical sensitiveness so far to get the bet- 

 ter of my common sense, as to induce me to add an s to it, I might be pitied ; 

 but if I then quote it as his, I state the thing which is not, and deserve blame : 

 besides, too, as " to write and read comes by nature," according to honest 

 Dogberry, it is but a pitiful thing, after all, to make a display of a natural 

 gift at another's expence. 



* Dr. Heineken is right in his conjecture. Gmelin is answerable for this 

 deviation from the original authority, and Dr. Turton, who placed too implicit 

 u reliance on one who did not deserve it, has here translated faithfully the so 

 called thirteenth edition of the Systema Naturae, omitting only the Cape of Good 

 Hope as an additional habitat of the Fringilla butyracea. — Ed. 



