318 
HINTS TO ORNITHOLOGISTS. 
self to be led away with the idea that these birds 
break through and demolish the hardest wood." • 
Give me the man who, after minute examination, 
has written his account of birds in the country 
where the birds themselves are found. Give me 
the man, I don't care of what nation, who has 
published his ornithological investigations without 
haying first placed them into the scientific hands of 
those men, who would fain persuade him that no 
work on ornithology can pass safely through the 
fiery ordeal of modern criticism, unless it has pre- 
viously received the polish of their own incom- 
parable varnish. 
Thus, in days of yore, old Apollo advised his 
son Phaeton to let his face be well smeared with 
celestial ointment, in order to make it fireproof, ere 
he mounted on the box of the solar chariot. 
** Turn pater ora sui, sacro medieamine, nati 
Contigit, et rapidae fecit patientia flammaB." 
But, notwithstanding this precaution^ the lad got 
himself into a sad broil; and we know not what 
disasters his folly might have brought upon the 
world, had not mother Earth bestirred herself, and 
persuaded Jupiter to stop his wild career. At her 
urgent entreaties, Jupiter felled him with a thun- 
derbolt into the river Po, where, I understand, he 
got pretty well cooled. 
Would that we had a Jupiter here in England, 
with a birch rod in his hand, to tickle some of our 
zoological Phaetons ! I would willingly act the 
part of mother earth ; and I would undertake to 
