DIE PAPAGEIEX. 5 



becomes therefore essential to ascertain how he could have been 

 led into such an error on such a point. 



The 84 pages devoted to this genus make the matter clear 

 enough. Dr. Finsch, a cabinet naturalist, on the strength, 

 mainly, of some mis-sexed specimens in museums, takes on 

 himself to disregard and disbelieve the positive statements of 

 working field naturalists. Most pathetically does he lament 

 our ignorance, (he should have spoken for himself, I think, not 

 others !) He says (p. 26). 



" Unfortunately, we lack almost entirely a thorough observa- 

 tion of the parrots. And it must be a long time still before we 

 are enlightened in regard to them, even approximately in the 

 same measure as we have been, by Nauruann, in regard to Euro- 

 pean, and Audubon in regard to North American birds. Only the 

 investigator who like these men lives the day through in the 

 forests, observes the process of development of the young from 

 the egg to the out-flight, kills innumerable specimens, and 

 examines closely the sex, will be in a position to inform us 

 thoroughly on such moot points." But, and this is the gravamen 

 of his offence, when such a trustworthy naturalist, who has lived 

 half his life in the woods, who has watched the bird from its 

 nest, who has shot innumerable specimens, and with his own 

 hands has ascertained the sexes by dissection, comes forward and 

 records the results, Dr. Finsch rejects them with a calm affecta- 

 tion of superiority and the bland remark that he " has noticed 

 from the writings on the subject, that the investigations have not 

 always been sufficiently exact ! " 



"Whatever the late Dr. Jerdon's merits as an ornithologist (and 

 I think that owing to his ill-health in later years, and his dis- 

 regard for the literary side of his work, these have been greatly 

 underrated) he was in his younger days, as in his prime, emi- 

 nently a field naturalist. He lived out in the jungles, gun in 

 hand, and every fact that he recorded on his own observation is 

 as absolutely to be relied on as any thing in this world can be. 

 I admit that his book embodies many grave errors, but on close 

 examination it will be found that these were not his own, but 

 those of other people whom he quoted, but (looking on his 

 work as a mere text book), without specific acknowledgment 

 in each case. 



Most of what he says about the distinctions of the sexes in 

 the paroquets, he says on his own authority, the result of those 

 very processes of observation, that Dr. Finsch so much deside- 

 rates. Unlike Dr. Finsch, he could in this matter say with 

 Newton " hypotheses non fingo"; he did not persuade himself of 



