Johannes Müller on Certain Variations in the Vocal Organs of the Passeres that have hitherto escaped-Notice

Abstract

MORE than thirty years ago was this celebrated treatise, now translated by Mr. Bell, published, but without attracting any notice in this country. It is true that some twelve months after the author's investigations were first communicated to the Academy of Sciences of Berlin (June 26, 1845), a brief abstract of them appeared in what was then, as it still is, our leading biological magazine (Ann. Nat. Hist., xvii. p. 499), but no one here seems to have thought them worthy of further attention. Indeed, the principal British ornithologists had so long gone astray in pursuit of that will-o'-the-wisp-the “Quinary System,” which seemed to have been revealed to the obscure vision of Vigors, and had so completely mystified themselves with hazy speculations concerning circles, types, affinities, and all the jargon of what was so loudly proclaimed to be the “Natural Arrangement,” that it would have been hopeless to expect them to return to the paths of common sense. Their successors had to make the best of what was before them, and that best was obviously to leave it alone: for they doubtless found, even as we find to day, that all which had been written by the Quinarians was hopelessly unintelligible.1 Preached, however, as this doctrine constantly was, amid terrific maledictions on all who hesitated to receive the “Circular System” as the orthodox faith, they were content to let its results pass unquestioned, and thus the “Natural” Orders and other groups, which were the invention of Vigors and some of his followers, were silently accepted, and they continued to be adopted by most British ornithologists until very recently, if indeed they have now gone wholly to their rest. There is nothing extraordinary in all this. No disputant is so difficult to overthrow as a mystic, and a mystic your Quinarian certainly was. He could, moreover—and the fact is worthy of note, since mystics are seldom so highly accomplished—write long and smooth sentences, irreproachable as to style or grammar, generally not deficient (allowance being made for certain false premisses) in logical arrangement, sometimes distinctly marked by wit, and always abounding in metaphor. They only lacked a plain meaning. If you pleaded that it was not easy to distinguish the boundaries of the metaphorical and the real, he politely intimated in reply that you were an ass, and deluged you with another torrent of mystic verbiage of the same kind. On raising further objection, your Quinarian began to lose his temper, and, metaphorically shaking “a bunch of fives” (namely, his fist) in your face, discharged at you a volley of well-assorted epithets, about the reality of which there could be no doubt. This is absolutely no exaggeration of some of the characteristics of the Quinarian controversy which may be found in certain publications since 1823, when Vigors unhappily began to apply to Ornithology the senseless fantasies which Macleay had a short time before evolved from the depths of his own imagination. Good work, very good work, was no doubt being done in the meanwhile by some British ornithologists, but the good work was wholly of a limited and special kind. Generalised or broad views were either not taken at all, or, if attempted, were propounded by men of comparatively poor ability, men who were unable to see their way through the baleful fogs that the Quinarian magicians had conjured up around them. It is not too much to say that for some forty years British ornithologists were wandering in a wilderness of words. Temminck's “Manuel d'Ornithologie,” the second edition of which was published in 1820, and speedily became well known in England, it is true, kept some, who regarded it as a kind of gospel, from being utterly bewildered by the cloudy dreams of the Quinarians, for Temminck was a simple-minded Dutchman, who had no philosophical or pseudo-philosophical theories to support, no circular visions to relate, and no metaphorical phrases wherewith to encumber his statements. He wrote in French, and if his language appeared to Vieillot not to be the pure French of the Académic Française, it was easily understood by most Englishmen, and he consequently exercised an enormous influence on their mind —an influence which in time produced evil effects, though that is at present no business of ours to show.