Batit—Ldentification of the Animals and Plants of India. 305 
the only evidence he could bring in support of the statement that this 
essentially Australian bird was to be found so far from its proper 
limits, was that the Rajah of the district told him so when he had 
been shown a domesticated specimen. To which I could only reply 
that a boastful spirit as to the resources of his own territory must 
have led the Rajah to be guilty of what was a downright falsehood. 
T have still another charge to make against the commentators. Up 
to the very last edition of one of our Greek authors, which was pub- 
lished in the present year, a custom has been in practice of passing very 
stale comments from one to another, without reference being made to 
more recent and direct sources of information. 
And here I would mention the names of two encyclopeedists for 
whose works I have the greatest respect and admiration: they are 
Lassen and Ritter, to the researches by both of whom commentators are 
much beholden. But as may readily be conceived, during the last fifty 
years there has been a great advance in our scientific and accurate 
knowledge of the animals and plants of India, nevertheless we find 
modern editors making use of statements proximately derived from 
Lassen, but which are often ultimately traceable to that most indus- 
trious compiler, Karl Ritter, who wrote nearly fifty years ago. Were 
he alive he would probably have kept better abreast with modern 
research than have so many who now use the data which he collected 
from still earlier writers. Surely such a statement as that there is at 
present a tribe of Khonds in the Dekkan, who eat the bodies of their 
deceased relatives, is one that ought not to appear, as it does in a 
recent edition, except it can be substantiated. It may be true; but, 
I must confess, that without modern and undoubted proof of the fact, 
Lam unwilling to believe it. 
The original texts of Megasthenes and Ktesias not having been 
preserved to us, except as fragments which have been incorporated by 
other authors, we cannot say with certainty what they may or may 
not have contained ; but it is sufficiently apparent that it is precisely 
the most marvellous and apparently impossible descriptions which have 
been preserved, sometimes out of mere curiosity, and sometimes for pur- 
poses of condemnation; the plain matter-of-fact stories about men, 
animals, and plants, if they ever existed, have been irretrievably lost. 
Though not unaware that I run the risk of some adverse criticism 
when entering into an arena of controversy like this, I have already 
received a considerable amount of encouragement from quarters 
where such work is duly appreciated; but the highest incentive 
I have had in the elucidation of these myths, apart at least from the 
interest of the study itself, is, that as a former Indian traveller myself, I 
derive a sincere pleasure in so far establishing the veracity and reliev- 
ing the characters of travellers from the aspersions which during 
twenty centuries, more or less, have been freely cast upon them. 
5 Gf. Herodotus, by Prof. Sayce. 
