272 Lord Walden on Mr. Allan Hume’s 
and “ regardless of the whole family of Fringillidce ** {t. c. 
p. 20), its ghastly echos grate on the tortured senses. It is 
not desired to he too hard on these feeble witicisms, nascent 
genius deserves encouragement, and their transcription to the 
pages of f The Ibis* is a penalty sufficiently severe. More¬ 
over it may he assured that if indulgence in such dreary 
buffoonery amuses Mr. Hume, or assists in promoting in 
India, if not the credit, at least the sale, of his periodical. 
Dr. Finsch will not grudge him the gratification-. But de¬ 
serving of passing notice is the fact that even when elabo¬ 
rating a joke, Mr. Hume cannot avoid being linguistically in¬ 
accurate. The German proper name f Finsch * and the 
English substantive ‘ finch* are not synonymous. 
In his concluding page ( t . c. 28) Mr. Hume asks, “ Pray 
Dr. Finsch how can it advance our real objects one atom, to 
call a bird that every one recognizes as f columboides* by 
your truly classical name f peristerodes* ? ** Without pre¬ 
suming to divine what Mr. Hume's “real objects” may be, 
the simple answer is that peristerodes is right and columboides 
is wrong. Let the literal meaning of the word columboides 
be expressed by a combination of English and French, or of 
English and German words, instead of Latin and Greek, and 
the grotesque incongruity will become apparent. Thus, 
Pigeonsemblable, or Pigeonahnlich, parrakeet. But from a 
writer who, when reviewing the masterly scientific work of a 
highly educated gentleman, descends to the use of slang terms 
and repellent vulgarisms, it may be too much to expect any 
appreciative sympathy with the modes of expression of a re¬ 
fined and cultured intellect. 
This assumption is not weakened by the passage now to be 
quoted, containing the reply of “ an unsophisticated field- 
naturalist here ** to the question put by Mr. Hume of “ what 
he thought of these Continental naturalists, with their eternal 
new names, and the everlasting ( mihi } tagged on after them.” 
“ ‘Well* he said ‘I guess the beggars can't discover any new 
species of their own, so they have dodged up this classical 
jim, to legalize their stealing other people's"' (t. c. p. 2). 
May it be asked, not from motives of mere curiosity, but for 
