DIE PAPAGEIEN. 27 



in borrowed, and too often, misplaced, and ill-dressed plumes, treat 

 with an affectation of superiority, which to all thinking 1 men is as 

 sad as it is ungrateful, the opinions and the labours of the men 

 who alone constitute their raison d'etre. 



I most freely admit the utility of both classes of workers ; the 

 cabinet naturalist is to the field observer (the real naturalist as 

 i" hold) what the head of the gun factory is to the general. But 

 ne sulor, &c. Let the cabinet naturalist stick to his S} r nonymes, 

 his formal schemes of classification, and his main work of com- 

 piling, comparing, and cautiously generalizing from the ob- 

 servations of the field* workers ; but let him avoid the pre- 

 sumption of disputing and denying the facts stated by admittedly 

 trustworthy members of this latter class, because they happen 

 to run counter to his own theories. 



As they exalt themselves, so also do too many cabinet natura- 

 lists unduly exalt (and as they are the chief writers and talkers, 

 half persuade the world to exalt), the work they seem so 

 specially to delight in, the rectification of synonymy. They 

 seem to lose sight of the fact, that the only object of a name is 

 to enable men to communicate to each other their observations in 

 regard to particular genera and species, without wasting time in 

 re-defining or describing these each time they have to mention 

 them. It is quite right and very desirable to adopt one uni- 

 form system of nomenclature and so smooth the path for neo- 

 phytes, but correct synonymy is not the end and aim of Natural 

 History ; it is only a small adjunct for facilitating our progress in 

 the study of this, and if we could only ensure that our fellow stu- 

 dents should make no mistake as to the species of which we wrote, 

 it would not signify one iota, so far as our real objects are con- 

 cerned, what names we used. 



After all, names are at best to the naturalist only what the 

 cross-threads of the copying frame are to the engraver. Value- 

 less in themselves, useful in so far as they serve as fixed points of 

 departure for his work and facilitate the transcription to his pages 

 of some faithful, though colourless, copy of the great picture. 



No real artist will waste his time in microscopic investigations 

 into the texture of the threads, when he can be studying the pic- 

 ture, and no real naturalist will waste much thought over syno- 

 nymy or nomenclature when he can be studying nature. The 

 naturalist's real work is to collect and record, to verify and com- 

 bine facts, in regard to the beings represented by that nomen- 

 clature, in such wise as to throw some fresh light on the general 



* At the risk of being charged with partiality for a fellow countryman, I would 

 point to Mr. Sharpe's Monograph of the King- fishers, as a model of what a Cabinet 

 Naturalist's work should be. 



