Oct. 1845.] Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. cvii 



2. The figure of the wild sheep of the Hindu Kosh ranges, though altogether faulty in 

 outline, is such that a really good figure might betaken from it, aided by very careful draw- 

 ings from life which I possess of a closely allied species, the Ovis musimon, and by the real 

 horns of the animal, of which several pairs were in the collection of specimens forv\ arded 

 by Sir Alexander Burnes, and (with the exception of duplicates transmitted to the India- 

 house, two pairs only being retained for the Society's collections) now under my charge 

 in the museum. 



3. To cite a bird, I remember instancing the Falco chicquera, of which the beak in 

 Burnes's figure is very ill-shaped, and the legs and toes are very much too slender, — 

 faults that, with others, might have been corrected (as in various other instances) by a 

 reference to Burnes's own specimens. Had I been consulted in the matter, I should have 

 done my utmost to dissuade the Society from expending money in the representation of 

 this and many other common and exceedingly well known species, even had they been 

 represented with the requisite accuracy. 



But in suggesting the propriety of such alterations (whether rightly or not so in the 

 opinion of the Committee), I do most distinctly protest against the imputed charge that 

 I ever wished them to be effected privately, or in secret, — in other words, that I ever 

 desired the Society should be guilty of a " breach of trust," which I also would have 

 considered to amount to " a scientific fraud :" and it is due to other zoologists that, I 

 should now interfere in their behalf, to notice an allegation contained in the same para- 

 graph of the same memorandum to the following effect : — 



" That the now anxious search of all European naturalists is exactly to find the original 

 drawings from which local found Ornitha? had been published, in order to correct these 

 flourishes, and interferences of authors and naturalists ; who, to make better pictures and 

 reduce the birds (principally) to their fancied types and systems, had in many instances 

 created enormous confusion, deprived the original observers of their due credit for active 

 research and accuracy, and had even made them pass, at least as careless persons, if not 

 as impostors ; when, on the contrary, the mischief and imposture was the work of the 

 naturalist editors, publishers, and artists." 



I believe, sir, that I have the credit, in well-informed quarters* of a tolerably familiar 

 acquaintance with zoological literature, but 1 beg to say that I cannot call to mind one 

 single instance to which the above remarks apply. 



The confusion adverted to has, on the contrary, originated in the blind confidence 

 which Latham more particularly, and some other ornithologists of the old school, and of 

 a past generation, reposed in the rude drawings of unscientific artists ; so rude, and often- 

 times grossly inaccurate, that it is only now that the subjects represented have come to 

 be, for the most part, familiarly known, that they can be recognised in the figures which 

 were intended to represent them, — and that the names subsequently applied to the objects 

 themselves can be superceded by those bestowed on the drawings, and heading the de- 

 scriptions taken from the latter, in conformity with the admitted law of priority. Of the 

 fact here stated, I could easily adduce instances almost without number.! 



* Vide ' Report of the British Association,' for 1844, p. 187. 



t In illustration, I send herewith two numbers of the ' Annals and Magazine of Na- 

 tural History,' containing papers by Mr. G. Gray and Mr. Strickland, wherein the confu- 

 sion that has resulted from the very reprehensible practice of naming species from bad 

 drawings is well exhibited. 



