Correspondence of the late Prof. Naumann. 159 



such letters not only deserve to be published, but it is our 

 duty to make them known, otherwise we run the risk of 

 seeming to despise and undervalue the life and labours of our 

 classical authors. 



Naumann travelled in Hungary, at that time really locu- 

 pletissima avium — very rich in birds indeed ; but he published 

 only a short report about his impressions. He knitted 

 friendly relations with the ornithologists of the date ; one of 

 these was the poor Petényi, whose numerous manuscripts 

 have, alas ! been lost with only a few exceptions. His 

 biographer, Otto Herman, complains that all his interesting- 

 correspondences had disappeared ; I am fortunately able to 

 say that his letters to Naumann are preserved, as well as 

 those of Emerich von Frivaldsky, Földvary von Földvar, and 

 the Baron Löbenstein, who contributed also to the ornitho- 

 logical exploration of Hungary. 



I cannot give here a complete list of learned men, some 

 fifty in number, whose letters I am now endeavouring to 

 arrange ; let me quote only some few names : Bechstein, the 

 head of the Academy of Forestry of Dreyssigacker, the 

 father of German ornithology, as Naumann himself calls 

 him ; Bekker, one of the authors of the celebrated " Darm- 

 städter Ornithologie," a work so beautiful that it may rival 

 those of John Gould ; the two Boie's, so well known to every 

 specialist for sj^stematics ; Bruch, the ingenious monographer 

 of the Gulls ; Ehrenberg, the famous traveller in Abyssinia, 

 whose discoveries with the microscope have rendered him 

 immortal ; Faber, the enthusiastic explorer of Icelandic bird- 

 life, who died in his best years ; Gloger, the father of bird 

 protection ; Kaup, the inventor of the rather puzzling- 

 quinary system, who published in the earliest English 

 ornithological periodical the "Contributions to Ornithology" 

 by Jardine ; Lichtenstein, the director of the Berlin Museum, 

 occupying a high rank in classification and systematics ; 

 Meckel, Nitzsch, and Budolp Wagner, the very stars of the 

 heaven of zootomy — the two last the discoverers of the 

 so-called pterylography, or the science of the distribution 

 of feathers on the bird's body ; Meyer, of Offenbach, the 

 famous author of the '" Taschenbuch," whose collection 

 formed the first beginning of the Senckenbergian Museum at 



