Loves Meinie | Page 3

we have no natural history of birds written yet.
It cannot be written but by a scholar and a gentleman; and no English
gentleman in recent times has ever thought of birds except as flying
targets, or flavorous dishes. The only piece of natural history worth the
name in the English language, that I know of, is in the few lines of
Milton on the Creation. The only example of a proper manner of
contribution to natural history is in White's Letters from Selborne. You
know I have always spoken of Bewick as pre-eminently a vulgar or
boorish person, though of splendid honor and genius; his vulgarity
shows in nothing so much as in the poverty of the details he has
collected, with the best intentions, and the shrewdest sense, for English
ornithology. His imagination is not cultivated enough to enable him to
choose, or arrange.
[5] Sir Arthur Helps. "Animals and their Masters," p. 67.
[6] Ariadne Florentina, vi. 45.
4. Nor can much more be said for the observations of modern science.
It is vulgar in a far worse way, by its arrogance and materialism. In
general, the scientific natural history of a bird consists of four
articles,--first, the name and estate of the gentleman whose gamekeeper
shot the last that was seen in England; secondly, two or three stories of
doubtful origin, printed in every book on the subject of birds for the last
fifty years; thirdly, an account of the feathers, from the comb to the
rump, with enumeration of the colors which are never more to be seen
on the living bird by English eyes; and, lastly, a discussion of the
reasons why none of the twelve names which former naturalists have
given to the bird are of any further use, and why the present author has
given it a thirteenth, which is to be universally, and to the end of time,
accepted.
5. You may fancy this is caricature; but the abyss of confusion
produced by modern science in nomenclature, and the utter void of the
abyss when you plunge into it after any one useful fact, surpass all
caricature. I have in my hand thirteen plates of thirteen species of
eagles; eagles all, or hawks all, or falcons all--whichever name you

choose for the great race of the hook-headed birds of prey--some so
like that you can't tell the one from the other, at the distance at which I
show them to you, all absolutely alike in their eagle or falcon character,
having, every one, the falx for its beak, and every one, flesh for its prey.
Do you suppose the unhappy student is to be allowed to call them all
eagles, or all falcons, to begin with, as would be the first condition of a
wise nomenclature, establishing resemblance by specific name, before
marking variation by individual name? No such luck. I hold you up the
plates of the thirteen birds one by one, and read you their names off the
back:--
The first, is an Aquila. The second, a Haliætus. The third, a Milvus.
The fourth, a Pandion. The fifth, an Astur. The sixth, a Falco. The
seventh, a Pernis. The eighth, a Circus. The ninth, a Buteo. The tenth,
an Archibuteo. The eleventh, an Accipiter. The twelfth, an Erythropus.
And the thirteenth, a Tinnunculus.
There's a nice little lesson to entertain a parish school-boy with,
beginning his natural history of birds!
6. There are not so many varieties of robin as of hawk, but the scientific
classifiers are not to be beaten. If they cannot find a number of similar
birds to give different names to, they will give two names to the same
one. Here are two pictures of your own redbreast, out of the two best
modern works on ornithology. In one, it is called "Motacilla rubecula;"
in the other, "Rubecula familiaris."
7. It is indeed one of the most serious, as one of the most absurd,
weaknesses, of modern naturalists to imagine that any presently
invented nomenclature can stand, even were it adopted by the consent
of nations, instead of the conceit of individuals. It will take fifty years'
digestion before the recently ascertained elements of natural science
can permit the arrangement of species in any permanently (even over a
limited period) namable order; nor then, unless a great man is born to
perceive and exhibit such order. In the meantime, the simplest and most
descriptive nomenclature is the best. Every one of these birds, for
instance, might be called falco in Latin, hawk in English, some word
being added to distinguish the genus, which should describe its

principal aspect or habit. Falco montium, Mountain Hawk; Falco
silvarum, Wood Hawk; Falco procellarum, Sea Hawk; and the like.
Then, one descriptive epithet would mark species. Falco montium,
aureus, Golden Eagle;