ORDER GALLINiE. 121" 



brought up in the Dutch menageries, and they have repro- 

 duced, when proper care has been taken in sorting the 

 species ; but it does not appear that the attempt to produce 

 hybrids from them was successful, as it was in the case of the 

 Hoccos ; perhaps the productions of this kind were only not 

 so numerous. 



The Penelope Cristata has been the most frequently 

 brought into Holland of any of the species. Many years 

 ago it bred in a menagerie near Utrecht. All the individuals 

 born there resembled the father and mother. Many of them 

 were in the possession of M. Temminck. 



This Guan was for a long time confounded with the 

 Marail Turkey. The first who described it well was Bris- 

 son, who also called it Dindon du Bresil. Our popular 

 names, thus indefinitely applied to foreign animals, are, it 

 must be confessed, extremely confusing. The name, for 

 example, of one species, applied to another of a genus totally 

 different, nay, not unfrequently to one of a different order, is 

 highly calculated to create mistaken notions, and mislead 

 a reader concerning the character and conformation of an 

 animal. Scientific names, were they always judiciously 

 chosen, and had they not unfortunately been multiplied into 

 a host of synonymes, would do much better ; at all events, 

 they do better than the application of our popular names to 

 foreign species, qualified or unqualified by epithets. If they 

 are not understood — which, in nine cases out of ten, we believe 

 to be the case by the generality of readers — the worst harm 

 they can do is to burthen the memory with what is unintel- 

 ligible, and certainly 



Less dang'rous is th' offence. 



To tire our patience than mislead our sense." 



But when we have a foreign name for a distinct species, 



