[18] “When a naturalist, either by visiting such spots of earth as are still out of the way, or by his good fortune, finds a very queer plant or animal, he is forthwith accused of inventing his game, the word not being used in its old sense of discovery but in its modern of creation. As soon as the creature is found to sin against preconception, the great (mis?) guiding spirit, à priori by name, who furnishes philosophers with their omniscience pro re natâ, whispers that no such thing can be, and forthwith there is a charge of hoax. The heavens themselves have been charged with hoaxes. When Leverrier and Adams predicted a planet by calculation, it was gravely asserted in some quarters that the planet which had been calculated was not the planet but another which had clandestinely and improperly got into the neighbourhood of the true body. The disposition to suspect hoax is stronger than the disposition to hoax. Who was it that first announced that the classical writings of Greece and Rome were one huge hoax perpetrated by the monks in what the announcer would be as little or less inclined than Dr. Maitland to call the dark ages?”—Macmillan, 1860.
[19] Poetic Epistles, Bk. iii., Ep. 3.
[20] Rara avis in terris, nigroque simillima cygno.
[21] “Having showed the foregoing description of the mountain cow, called by the Spaniards ante [manatee?], to a person of honour, he was pleased to send it to a learned person in Holland.” This learned person discusses it and compares it with the hippopotamus, and winds up by saying, in reference to a description of the habits of the hippopotamus, as noticed at Loango by Captain Rogers, to the effect that when they are in the water they will sink to the bottom, and then walk as on dry ground, “but what he says of her sinking to the bottom in deep rivers, and walking there, if he adds, what I think he supposes, that it rises again, and comes on the land, I much question; for that such a huge body should raise itself up again (though I know whales and great fish can do) transcends the faith of J. H.”—F. J. Knapton, Collection of Voyages, vol. ii., part ii. p. 13. 4 vols., London, 1729.
[22] Historical Account of Discoveries and Travels in Asia. Hugh Murray, F.R.S.E., 3 vols. 8vo. Edinburgh, 1820.
[23] Bk. x., chap. 53.
[24] A writer in Macmillan’s Magazine in 1860 concludes a series of objections to the canal as follows: “And the Emperor must hesitate to identify himself with an operation which might not impossibly come to be designated by posterity as ‘Napoleon’s Folly.’”
[25] The Bower Bird, Ptilonorhyncus holosericeus, and the Garden-building Bird of New Guinea, Amblyornis inornara.
[26] Recherches, &c. des Mammiferes, plate 1. Paris, 1868 to 1874.
[27] “This obstacle was a forest of oaks, not giant oaks, but the very reverse, a forest of dwarf oaks (Quercus nana). Far as the eye could reach extended the singular wood, in which no tree rose above thirty inches in height. Yet was it no thicket, no undergrowth of shrubs, but a true forest of oaks, each tree having its separate stem, its boughs, its lobed leaves, and its bunches of brown acorns.”—Capt. Mayne Reid, The War Trail, chap. lxiv.