276 
Lord Walden on Mr . Allan Hume’s 
serve. Knowing all that has been written, he will know what 
species have been described,, what problems demand solution, 
and he will not bore the world with repetitions of well-known 
facts or records of trivial and useless observations. Another 
essential quality is that which gives the power of recording 
with precision and terseness, untainted by an inflated, sen¬ 
tentious, and dogmatic egotism, the results of his observations. 
Such was Dr. Jerdon. If asked to illustrate my meaning by 
a living standard I would name Mr. Wallace as the highest. 
“Let the cabinet naturalist stick to his synonyms . . . . 
but let him avoid the presumption of disputing and denying 
the facts stated by admittedly trustworthy members of this 
latter class ” (field workers) “ because they happen to run 
counter to his own theories ” (t. c. p. 27). It would be easy to 
point out the numberless erroneous observations made by field 
workers, Indian field workers to boot, even with the objects 
of their observations constantly before their eyes. And are 
naturalists in Europe (the most of whom, if not all, have been 
in their day, and are even now, field workers) to be charged 
with presumption when they “dispute” or “deny” such 
erroneous observations, or can show an absence of conclusive 
evidence ? Why, the healthy progress of science depends on 
antagonism; it is by the flails of disputation that the truth 
is threshed out. But it is new to hear that a naturalist is 
open to imputations of presumption when he “disputes or 
denies ” the accuracy of other men's observations. May we not, 
without being chargeable with flattery, venture to assume that 
Mr. Hume falls within his own definition of a trustworthy 
field naturalist; and yet was he not the discoverer, describer, 
and namer of Niltava leucotis (Ibis, 1870, p. 144) ? An 
achievement almost vying in brilliancy with that of the 
discoverer of Sparactes cristata. Should a cabinet natu¬ 
ralist be debarred from disputing such an observation if he 
found it “ ran counter to his own theories ” of structure ? 
In this instance cabinet naturalists were saved from the dis¬ 
agreeable duty; for I believe Mr. Hume subsequently sug¬ 
gested that he had described from a made-up specimen (Zook 
Bee. vii. p. 50). But ornithologists generally owe a deep debt 
