Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 1 (1877).djvu/29

Rh To put a case which I never heard of happening, although it might well occur:—A man fishing, entomologizing, or botanizing along a stream encounters, one after another, a dozen Kingfishers; yet perhaps for days, weeks, or even months, he may have taken almost precisely the same walk, perhaps for the same purpose, without ever having seen more than a single bird of the species in one day, and that only at rare intervals. He will record the fact, and it is worth recording, but the probability is that in so doing he will rather dwell on its personality or local character—the circumstance that he, and he alone of mortals, was so favoured as to be the witness of such an unusual sight, and that his favourite stream was the scene; and he will be tempted to relate the happy accident which led him on that particular day to start with rod, net, or vasculum on that particular excursion. The cause or causes which induced the appearance of so unusual a number of Kingfishers will be most likely passed over altogether, although herein lies the sole importance of the communication. The observer's personality is of little or no interest to any one but himself: it is the bird or the number of birds observed under such circumstances that alone can have any zoological bearing.

In like manner, by too many naturalists, is the capture of a scarce insect or mollusk in a particular locality regarded rather as an instance of the lucky captor's prowess than as having reference to the appearance of the species. Still more forcible are these considerations when the species may be, after all, one that is not rare, and one that may be safely expected to show itself in the locality at the proper season.

There is some reason to suppose that the prevalence of notices of this kind (and I think no one can assert that past volumes of have been free from them) has been the means of deterring excellent observers from recording in this or other journals discoveries of considerable interest and importance. One such may perhaps be cited as having been brought to my knowledge