No. 58. — 1907.] JOAN GIDEON LOTEN, F.R.S. 



229 



one of these drawings of the same object but ruined them 

 both ;" and somewhat lower : "By no means is this reflexion 

 on the late Mr. Sidney Parkinson,* who kept everything very 

 clean," and finally in the lower corner as a further explanation 



(erased later, but still legible) : " This was the bungling 



engraver Mazell."f 



On another plate (also erased, but still legible) : " Made so 

 dirty by the pityable engraver Mazell ; " and on plate 4 (Owl) J 

 there follows after a long unbosoming, later made illegible, 

 certainly also directed at the engraver : " What a difference of 

 behaviour between the late worthy Mr. Geo. Edwards and 

 such a scurrilous, scrubby fellow." 



That later, however, the wrath of the old man, even 

 though it were just, was calmed, appears not only from 

 the erasures just referred to, but from the words, placed 

 under the erased portion of the plates, " Forgive and forget." 



The perusal of Lot en's notes offers the reader moreover in 

 many respects a peculiar pleasure, both because one obtains 

 spontaneously a retrospect to the establishment of the East 

 India Company in the tropics, now a century and a half ago, and 

 also as regards the evidence of accurate observation by the 

 writer, and the often valuable details related by him regarding 

 the ideas of the natives touching the depicted animals and 

 plants or their characteristics and value.§ 



A couple of examples of this : — Of the Pitta, called by Loten 

 "the short-tailed Pye":|| "I once found such a bird at 

 Colombo inside the citadel in the garden behind the govern- 

 ment house after I had resided there quite a year or longer ; 

 it leaped to the ground, and let itself be caught with the 

 hand If... 



* The talented young artist who accompanied Banks and Cook in 

 their voyage round the world in 1768. He died at sea on 26th December 

 1771. (See Diet, of Nat. Biog.) 



f Regarding this man see later on. 



J The Little Horn Owl, doubtless, forming plate iii. in Pennant's 

 Ind. Zool. 



§ It is to be hoped that Mr. van Houten will in some future paper 

 publish the whole of Loten's annotations. 



|| This name is quoted in English. The bird in question is figured 

 in plate cxiv. of Edwards's Gleanings (see under Section III.). 

 Cf. Legge's Birds of Ceylon 691. 



