1554 The Zoologist — February, 1869. 



Auk or Booby Gannet." The " gorfoii," at p. 386, is an admirable 

 representation of the bird we used to call the " crested penguin." 

 "The lesser black-backed gull [La r us fuse us),'' p. 393, is a most 

 accurate representation of the bird I have known from my childhood 

 as the common cormorant. "The Storm Petrel or Mother Carey's 

 Chicken [Tlutlassidroma pelaf/ica)" at p. 397, is represented as a large 

 and exquisitely spotted bird altogether different from the black 

 swallow-like bird to which 1 have been accustomed to give that familiar 

 name. 



The three changers of received names, Swainson, Neville Wood and 

 Macgillivray, are fairly distanced in this competitive nomenclature. 

 All the three naturalists I have mentioned tried to convey a meaning in 

 their new names, however neatly concealed ; but in this translation of 

 Mangin all is travestied : as in our pantomimes everybody is turned 

 into somebody else. 



I have said I never saw the original of this work, and therefore it is 

 very difficult to make out which of these metamorphoses is due to the 

 wand of the author and which to that of the translator; or whether 

 both are harlequins: and it is equally difficult to make out when they 

 are iu earnest and when they are poking their fun at us. It is scarcely 

 more easy to understand the birth of ocean. The authors, writing of 

 " the Brute Period in which as yet no sign of life has appeared," 

 evidently a kind of lucus a noii lucendo period, proceed thus: — "The 

 first rains fall. At the outset they are almost immediately evaporated 

 upon coming in contact with the burning soil ; but it cools all the 

 more quickly : thus they are condensed to fall again and again, until 

 liquid layers (so to speak) form and develop, augment in depth, and 

 increase in extent, finally spreading over a considerable area, or even 

 the entirety, of the earth's surface. Thus is born the Ocean." — p. 17. 



This graphic description is rendered still more complete by a 

 spirited engraving of " The primaeval Ocean," with a chain of wild 

 geese flying above its surface : one can't help thinking they must have 

 felt thankful for so vast a supply of what they were henceforward to 

 consider as their natural element: but this is one of the "mysteries" 

 the volume leaves unexplained. 



I recollect that the late Mr. Swainson, whose labours were once 

 criticized rather severely by one who unfortunately acknowledged his 

 inability to understand them, retorted that he had " written for genera- 

 tions yet unborn, not for such small minds as now intruded themselves 

 into the walks of science." This is the case with the authors before 



