OF THE BIRDS OF AFRICA. 195 



stance, he has made a peacock of the Cape ostrich, , because the 

 colonists call that bird the wild peacock. It would be more than 

 astonishing, that, after five years' residence at the Cape, and engaged 

 solely in researches after birds, I should never see any of the eagles of 

 which Kolben speaks, and declares moreover to be so exceedingly com- 

 mon. Indeed, I should never have been induced to offer any remarks 

 upon birds mentioned by that writer, if BufFon had not taken occasion 

 to make comparisons from his descriptions, and to arrive at conclusions, 

 which are, in many instances, completely absurd. 



There is not a bird, in respect of which so many fables have been 

 circulated as eagles, and particularlyour baldbuzzard , which was known in 

 the early days of antiquity, if, indeed, the term known may be applied 

 to designate the gross errors, which have been perpetuated about this 

 bird. Albertus the Great wrote, that the baldbuzzard had one foot like 

 a kite, and the other like a goose ; Gesner, Aldrovand, Klein, and even 

 Linnaeus, propagated the same story. Nothing affords more conclusive 

 evidence of the manner in which the observations of ancient ornitholo- 

 gists were conducted ; and, unfortunately, there is no new work which 

 is altogether free from the errors and absurdities of ancient writers. 

 The task is easier and shorter leisurely to compile a book, than to de- 

 pend upon personal observations ; and hence it most frequently hap- 

 pens, that consequences are deduced from the most absurd and im- 

 probable relations ; for ornithologists who have never studied nature but 

 in the writings of their predecessors, and who yet have a desire to 

 furnish us with their own ideas, heap new and absurd reflections upon 

 ancient errors, which never fail to produce results of a still more mon- 

 strous character. In this way BufFon himself, often confounding three 

 or four very different and unknown species, in order to make of them so 

 many varieties of the same species, eventually presents us, for a second 

 species of the same genus, with a bird of which he has no other indica- 

 tion than a description so imperfect, as to render it impossible to under- 

 stand to what genus it belongs. 



For my own part I am of opinion, that those who have given varie- 

 ties of age and sex of the same species, as so many different species, 

 have done less mischief than Buffon, who is strongly against them, 

 when he indicates as three varieties of climate, three birds, which are 

 not only of different species, but even of different genera, as I shall 

 have occasion to remark in speaking of the Shrikes of the Cape ; 

 and in a hundred other articles I shall also prove, that this eminent 

 naturalist, in writing his ornithology, had perhaps never seen the bird 



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