Ornithological dictionary of British birds / By Colonel G. Montagu.

  • George Montagu
Date:
1833
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Ornithological dictionary of British birds / By Colonel G. Montagu. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    “fly in the air, and sing,” * forgetting that more than two-thirds of all the known species of birds never sing; and that many birds, such as the cassowary, the ostrich, and the penguin, cannot fly for want of sufficient wings. In the same vein, we are told of his small birds, (Passeres,) that they are “vocal, and feed the young by thrusting the food down their throats.” It is also said, ‘‘ nest formed with wonderful art.”+ Whence we must of course infer that the fly- catchers, (Muscicapide, Vicors,) certainly, with few exceptions, the most silent of all birds, are “ vocal ;” and that the flimsy nest of the nightingale, and the few straws collected by the larks and other ground builders, though arranged with much neat- ness, constitute a “nest formed with wonderful art.” ‘The story of thrusting or ramming food down the throats of the young, is at variance with the observation of every boy who ever robbed a bird’s nest. The late Dr. Heineken, an unquestionably good naturalist, justly characterises Gmelin, a well-known disciple of this school, as having an ‘instinctive propensity towards the erroneous, (an obliquity by no means unusual with this sort of gentry).” He also says, ** Gmelin’s thirteenth edition of Linneus, as it is called, I have had the good fortune never to be burdened with.” [Tem- minck calls it ‘the most indigested book in existence,’ {] “but in an evil hour, a kind friend bestowed upon me the seven ponderous tomes of that kindred spirit, Turton.”§ It is worth remarking that the good sense of the English public never encouraged this latter work, which may now be had for little more than the price of waste paper, along with a book of similar trash—Moh’s Natu- ral History System of Mineralogy, by Haidinger; at the very time, too, when the works of genuine naturalists, such as White’s Selborne, and Knapp’s Journal of a Naturalist, are selling by thousands: facts of more weight than any argument in proof of my position. Cicero was advised by his friends not to write his * Turton’s Linneus, i.4. ‘“ Aves. Aeree vocales volucres pulcherrime.— Alis duobus pennatis volitantes bipedes dignoscuntur.”—Linneus, Syst. Nat. vol. i. p. 109, edit. 12th. + Turton p. 132. “ Nidus artificiosus; Pullis cibus incaleandus.”—Linneus, Syst. Nat. vol. i. p. 116, edit. 12th. ¢t Manuel d@’Ornith., Avant-propos, p. xxxii. § Zool. Journ. v. 73.
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