20 BIOGRAPHY. 



Cayenne, with a bill a yard long, making a noise like a 

 puppy dog, and laying eggs in hollow trees ? The Toucans, 

 to be sure, might retort — to what purpose were gentle- 

 men in Bond Street created? To what purpose were 

 certain foolish, prating members of Parliament created? 

 pestering the House of Commons with their ignorance and 

 folly, and impeding the business of the country. There 

 is no end of such questions. So we will not enter into the 

 metaphysics of the toucan." 



Perhaps the oddest thing to be found in criticism is 

 that which is given in Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopedia. 

 Waterton's statements having been proved to be true, 

 the writer now turns round, and tries to show that after 

 all there was nothing very wonderful in the achieve- 

 ment. 



" The crocodile in fact, is only dangerous when in the 

 water. Upon land it is a slow-paced and even timid 

 animal, so that an active boy armed with a small hatchet 

 might easily despatch one. There is no great prowess 

 therefore required to ride on the back of a poor cayman 

 after it has been secured, or perhaps wounded ; and a 

 modern writer might well have spared the recital of his 

 feats in this way upon the cayman of Guiana, had he not 

 been influenced in this iand numberless other instances by 

 the greatest possible love of the marvellous, and a constant 

 propensity to dress truth in the garb of fiction." 



Putting aside the fact that the writer received some of 

 his earliest instructions from Waterton, who was always 

 ready to impart his knowledge to those who seemed likely 

 to make a good use of' it, the assertion is absolutely 

 unaccountable. No man was less influenced by a love of 

 the marvellous, and none less likely to " dress truth in the 

 garb of fiction." 



His knowledge of Nature was almost wholly obtained. , 



