DIE PAPAGEIEN. 6 



I fancy that there are a good many simple-hearted English 

 people who hold a very similar opinion, but 



" Him as prigs vot isn't his'n 

 Ven he's cotched 'ill go to pris'n," 



and if the learned authors escape the pillory they so richly de- 

 serve, (and it shall be no fault of mine if they do) at any rate 

 we have the consolation of knowing, that posterity if it cannot 

 "quod" them "will quod" their fine names and consign them 

 to the limbo of synonymes, where " Bequiescant in pace ! " 



This, however, is not the only form of pedantry against which 

 it behoves us to protest. There is that curious custom of parad- 

 ing brief descriptions in what is supposed to be Latin ; as prefixes 

 or tags to full, sound, sufficient English or German ones. 



The motives that lead authors into this somewhat mean- 

 ingless practice are doubtless various. Many men I suspect 

 merely follow, without thinking, a long established custom, 

 which, however empty and senseless now, once had its use. 



To these, I would say go back to your premises and see if the 

 progress of time has not rendered this dark-age custom to which 

 you so fondly cling, wholly obsolete ? has not indeed converted 

 it into a practice calculated to amuse rather than instruct ? 



When this custom originated, readers were rare ; only a few 

 learned men dived much into books ; these few all understood 

 Latin, and were scattered over the length and breadth of 

 Europe. Modern languages were little cultivated, and foolish 

 national jealousies rendered it rather a disgrace than an honour 

 to bo proficient in foreign tongues. It followed that every man 

 who in those days desired his writings to be read by others 

 than his fellow countrymen had, of necessity, either to write 

 in Latin, or to append to his work a more or less complete trans- 

 lation in that language. 



But times have now changed ; every educated man in Europe, 

 I may say in the. whole world, knows more or less of English, 

 German, and French. Nine out of every ten men interested in 

 ornithology know these languages better than they do Latin. 



If a man writing in any of these three is not content with the 

 readers, who will understand that language, let him add a descrip- 

 tion in one of the other two, or in both, if he is so insatiable for 

 admiring students of his wisdom. There will at any rate be some 

 sense in this, he will add an hundred to his readers for one that 

 his Latin will gain him, and he will probably be able to express 

 what he has to say far more accurately and elegantly. 



But there is another class with whom I have less patience, 

 who only stick in these Latin tags because they think it looks 



