its wild self alone? Who wants some man's ugly phiz to be projected upon it? The lion—the eagle—the albatross—we see them as we say their names. But Jones's lion—Smith's eagle—Thomson's or somebody's albatross, what do these body forth for us? Not only the animal itself, but everything it suggests, as pertaining to it, that should make its appropriate setting in our minds, the sea, the mountain peaks, the sand-swept, bush-strewn desert, with the ideas belonging to each, the feelings they arouse, the whole mental picture in fact, is blurred or cruelly blotted out by the obtrusive image of some human face or form, which insists upon fitting itself to the irrelevant human name, and which, as there is no knowledge to guide it, is made up, usually, of the most commonplace elements. Thus an indistinct prosaic figure of our own species is substituted for that of the species itself—obsesses us, as it were, and prevents that legitimate, placid enjoyment which a naturalist should receive through the name alone of any animal. I hate these obtrusions. Why, at least, cannot they be shrouded in the Latin only—since every species has its Latin name? Thus decently buried, the Temmincks and the Richardsons, the Schalks, Burchells, and Grevys, would not so much bother us. But for heaven's sake let the vernacular name of any creature have to do with itself only. It is intolerable to want to see a bird of paradise—"in my mind's eye Horatio"—and to have to see Herr Schalk, or a zebra and have to see Monsieur Grevy—a shadowy
