286 
Lord Walden on Mr. Allan Hume’s 
italics, is appended this footnote, with which, I much regret, 
I must soil these pages by transcribing:—“ This is not a 
matter of course, because a naturalist who begins by appro¬ 
priating his neighbour’s species, may end by annexing their 
specimens. As Dr. Finsch would doubtless say f Facile * 
descensus, etc.V” 
Having delivered himself of this magnanimous sentiment, 
with its playful insinuation of a felonious tendency in Dr. 
Finsch, a passage which will only escape the indignant repro¬ 
bation of all high-minded men, when it escapes observation, 
Mr. Hume proceeds to discuss Dr. Finsch’s treatment of 
Palceornis schisticeps, Hodgson. After another offensive 
personality, a wretched joke about ff his sensitive classical 
nerves!” Mr. Hume quotes and criticises thus:—Accord¬ 
ing to Blyth ’ (and he might have added Hodgson who de¬ 
scribed the bird, Jerdon, and a dozen others), f the females 
are only distinguished by the absence of the red-brown wing 
spot.’ Blyth of course being no authority any more than 
other Indian ornithologists. Dr. Finsch continues, f I am 
much more inclined to conclude that the red-brown spot 
would appear also in the full plumaged female,’ in other words 
he through his supreme wisdom without having examined a 
single bird in the flesh, is intuitively better acquainted with 
the state of the case than skilled practical naturalists who 
have dissected scores” (t. c. pp. 17,18). Then comes in, as a 
Deus ex machina, the great, frequent dictatorial Egof, with 
ponderous yet impotent effect. “ Let me tell Dr. Finsch, that 
I personally must have sexed some thirty specimens of this 
species, and that the following is my experience” ( l. c.). Of 
the “ experience ” which follows, not having been published 
when Dr. Finsch wrote, it is unnecessary to give more than the 
first sentence,The female always wants the deep maroon red 
* What Dr. Finsch would “doubtless” have said, had he been quoting’ 
Virgil, is given in the errata. 
f It may be here mentioned, as a matter of dry statistical detail, that 
apart from copious extracts from Dr. Finsch and Captain Hutton, and 
besides a host of “me’s” “we’s” “my’s” and “us’s,” the first personal 
pronoun “I ” occurs in the twenty-eight pages of this review at least one 
hundred and sixty-six times. 
