Fennec
London Publish’d Dec.r 1.st 1789. by G. Robinson & Co.
Doctor Sparman, with his natural dullness, and a disingenuousness which seems partly natural, partly acquired, and improved by constant plagiarisms, from the works of others, pretends in favour of his country and countrymen, to steal this into a Swedish discovery. He says that Mr Brander has published an account of it in some Swedish transactions, a book I never saw, but that being long importuned by his friend Mr Nicander, to give the figure of the animal itself to be published, he constantly refused it.
Whether this fact is so or not, I do not pretend to give my opinion: if it is, I cannot but think Mr Brander’s conduct in both cases was extremely proper. The creature itself passed, by very fair means, from my possession into Mr Brander’s, who cannot doubt that I would have given it to him in preference to Mr Cleveland, if I had known he thought it of the least consequence; he was then, as having had the animal by just means in his possession, as much entitled to describe him as I was; or as the Turk, the prior possessor, who gave him to me, had he been capable, and so inclined. On the other hand, Mr Brander likewise judged very properly in refusing to publish the drawing at the request of Mr Nicander. The drawing was not justly acquired, as it was obtained by a breach of faith, and seduction of a servant, which might have cost him his bread. It was conducted with a privacy seldom thought necessary to fair dealing, nor was it ever known to me, till the young man began to be dangerously sick at Tunis, when he declared it voluntarily to me, with a contrition, that might have atoned for a much greater breach of duty.
Dr Sparman attempts to conceal these circumstances. He says Mr Brander told him, that I saw this animal at Algiers, and that I employed the same painter that he did to make the drawing of him, and speaks of a painter found at Algiers as readily as if he had been at the gates of Rome or Naples. These are the wretched subterfuges of low minds, as distant from science as they are from honour and virtue. Why, if the animal was equally known to Mr Brander and me, did he not, when writing upon it, give his name, his manners, the uses to which he was destined, and the places where he resided? why send to Algiers for an account of him, after having him so long in his possession, since at Algiers he was probably as great a stranger as he was at Stockholm? why call him a fox, or pronounce his genus, yet write to Algiers for particulars to decide what that genus was?
The Count of Buffon[55], content with the merit of his own works, without seeking praise from scraps of information picked up at random from the reports of others, declares candidly, that he believes this animal to be as yet anonyme, that is, not to have a name, and in this, as in other respects, to be perfectly unknown. If those that have written concerning it had stopt here likewise, perhaps the loss the public would have suffered by wanting their observations would not have been accounted a great detriment to natural history.
Mr Pennant[56], from Mr Brander’s calling it a fox, has taken occasion to declare that his genus is a dog. Mr Sparman, that he may contribute his mite, attacks the description which I gave of this animal in a conversation with the Count de Buffon at Paris. He declares I am mistaken by saying that it lives on trees[57]; for in consequence, I suppose, of its being a fox, he says it burrows in the ground, which, I doubt very much, he never saw an African fox do. His reason for this is, that there is a small animal which lives in the sands at Camdebo, near the Cape of Good Hope, which is rose-coloured, and he believes it to be the animal in question, for he once hunted it till it escaped by burrowing under ground, but he did not remark or distinguish his ears[58].
I do really believe there may be many small animals found at Camdebo, as well as in all the other sands of Africa; but having seen the rest of this creature during the whole time of a chace, without remarking his ears, which are his great characteristic, is a proof that Dr Sparman is either mistaken in the beast itself, or else that he is an unfortunate and inaccurate observer. There is but one other animal that has ears more conspicuous or disproportioned than this we are now speaking of. I need not name him to a man of the professor’s learning. The Doctor goes on in a further description of this animal that he had never seen. He says his name is Zerda, which I suppose is the Swedish translation of the Arabic word Jerd, or Jerda. But here Dr Sparman has been again unlucky in his choice, for, besides many other differences, the Jerd, which is an animal well known both in Africa and Arabia, has no tail, but this perhaps is but another instance of the Doctor’s ill fortune; in the first case, he overlooked this animal’s ears; in the second, he did not perceive that he had a tail.
The Arabs who conquered Egypt, and very soon after the rest of Africa, the tyranny and fanatical ignorance of the Khalifat of Omar being overpast, became all at once excellent observers. They addicted themselves with wonderful application to all sorts of science; they became very skilful physicians, astronomers, and mathematicians; they applied in a particular manner, and with great success, to natural history, and being much better acquainted with their country than we are, they were, in an especial manner, curious in the accounts of its productions. They paid great attention in particular to the animals whose figures and parts are described in the many books they have left us, as also their properties, manners, their uses in medicine and commerce, are let down as distinctly and plainly as words alone could do. Their religion forbade them the use of drawing; this is the source of the confusion that has happened, and this is the only advantage we have over them.
I believe there are very few remarkable animals, either in Africa or Arabia, that are not still to be found described in some Arabian author, and it is doing the public little service, when, from vanity, we substitute crude imaginations of our own in place of the observations of men, who were natives of the country, in perpetual use of seeing, as living with the animals which they described. There cannot, I think, be a stronger instance of this, than in the subject now before us; notwithstanding what has been as confidently as ignorantly asserted, I will venture to affirm, that this animal, so far from being unknown, is particularly described in all the Arabian books; neither is he without a name; he has one by which he invariably passes in every part of Africa, where he exists, which in all probability he has enjoyed as long as the lion or the tiger have theirs. He is white, and not rose-coloured[59]; he does not burrow in the earth, but lives upon trees; he is not the jerda, but has a tail, and his genus is not a dog, for he is no fox. Here is a troop of errors on one subject, that would give any man a surfeit of modern description, all arising from conceit, the cacoethes scribendi, too great love of writing, without having been at the pains to gain a sufficient knowledge of the subject by fair inquiry and a very little reading.