… Soon after the "acid-bellied whale" I discovered a whole host of other animals. I will mention only a few: the "polished philanthropist", a mammal of the kangaroo species, the "edible ox", the patriarch of our bovine family, and the "sepia infusorian", which I counted among the wandering rats.

Every day, new animals appeared. I was myself surprised by my success in this field. I would never have thought that I would ever need to increase the number of animals to such an extent, or that Brehm had left so many animals unnoticed in his "Animal Life". Did Brehm and all his followers know anything about my Icelandic bat, the so-called "overseas bat", or about my house cat from the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro called the "deer pačueha, the wicked"? Did naturalists have any idea until then about the "engineer Kūns flea", which I found in amber and which was completely blind, as it had lived in the skin of an equally blind prehistoric mole, but the latter, as I wrote, had inherited its blindness from the mating of its tribal mother with a blind "cave proteus" from the Postojna Grotto, which in those days reached as far as the present Baltic Ocean?

This actually unremarkable incident sparked a great polemic between the newspapers "Čas" and "Cech", as the latter, in one of its feuilletons, quoted my article about my newly discovered flea, remarking: "God does well what He does." "Čas", on the other hand, from a purely realistic point of view, demolished both my flea and the esteemed "Cech", and from that time on my star as a discoverer and inventor of new beings began to fade. The subscribers of "Animal World" became restless.

The reason for this unrest was some of my articles on beekeeping and poultry farming; in them, I developed new theories that caused a whole panic, because after some of my quite simple pieces of advice, the well-known beekeeper Pazurek had a stroke and beekeeping in the Šumava and Krkonoše mountain regions began to die out. Poultry were struck by a plague and they all perished. Subscribers wrote threatening letters and cancelled their subscriptions.

I turned to birds living in the wild, and I still remember what an adventure I had with the editor of the newspaper "Selsky Obzor", the clericalist MP, director Jozef M. Kadlčak.

I cut out a picture of a bird sitting in a hazel bush from the English magazine "Country Life". I named this bird the "riekstrozis" (nutcracker), just as I would logically have named a bird sitting in a juniper bush a "kadiķrozis" (juniper-cracker) or at least a "kadiķroziene".

And look what happened. Mr. Kadlčak attacked me in an open letter, claiming that this bird was a jay, not some sort of nutcracker, and that in German it is called "Eichelhäher".

I replied with a letter in which I laid out all my theories about the nutcracker, weaving in all sorts of insults and fabricated quotes from Brehm. MP Kadlčak, in turn, replied with a lead article published in the newspaper "Selsky Obzor".

My boss, Mr. Fuchs, was sitting as usual in the café reading the provincial newspapers, as he had recently been searching them for reviews of my enthusiastic articles in "Animal World". When I arrived, he pointed me to the "Selsky Obzor" that was lying on the table, and, looking at me with a sad gaze, which had been common with him lately, asked me to read it aloud.

I read aloud in front of the entire café audience:

«Dear Editor!

I have already pointed out that your magazine introduces unusual and unfounded terminology, does not care about the purity of the Czech language, and invents all sorts of animals. As an example, I have already mentioned that your editor, instead of the usual term "jay", proudly says "riekstrozis", even though even in German this word "Eichelhäher" means "jay".»

— A jay,— the publisher sighed in despair. I calmly read on:

«After that, I received an unimaginably rude, personally insulting, and impolite letter from the editor of "Animal World", in which I am called a deplorable fool and a cattle-beast, to which I energetically protest. This is not how polite people respond to objective scientific objections. I would gladly like to know which of us is the greater cattle-beast. Perhaps it is true that I should not have written the warnings on postcards, but sent them in a sealed letter; however, being busy at work, I did not pay attention to such trifles, but now, after such a base attack, I want to nail the editor of "Animal World" to the pillory.

Your editor-sir is very much mistaken in thinking that I am a thick-headed fool who has no idea about what one or another bird is called. I have been engaged in ornithology for years, drawing my knowledge not only from books but from nature, and I have more birds in cages than your editor, this inhabitant of Prague's taverns and pubs, has seen in his entire life.

Of course, that is not so important, but it would not hurt your "Animal World" editor to verify who he calls a fool before he allows himself to write such impudence that might fall under the eyes of readers in Moravia, Frýdlant and Místek, where, before this article, your magazine also had subscribers.

Of course, the intention here is not to polemicize personally with this feeble-minded type, but the question must be decided on its merits, therefore I repeat once again that it is completely unacceptable to invent new incomprehensible names when we have a generally known and established name "jay".»

— So, a jay,— my boss pronounced in an even more desperate voice.

I read on calmly, not allowing myself to be disturbed:

«If a non-specialist and a drunkard takes on an unsuitable task, then it is impudence on his part. Who has ever called a jay a nutcracker? In the book "Our Birds" on page 148, there is also the Latin term — Garrulus glandarius B. A. Therefore, this bird is a jay.

The editor of your magazine will have to admit that I know birds better than any non-specialist. Dr. Bayer calls the nutcracker "Nucifraga caryocatactes B.", whereby "B" in no way means, as your editor claims, the first letter of the word "bulduris". Czech ornithologists generally know only the common jay, not all sorts of nutcrackers invented by that gentleman who, according to his own theory, fits the first letter "B" very well. This is an awkward personal attack on his part, which does not change the situation.

A jay will remain a jay, even if the editor of "Animal World" from anger… This is only extra proof of how frivolously and erroneously a person can write, even if he had not referred so rudely to Brehm. This narrow-minded subject writes that the jay, according to Brehm, belongs to the crocodile species, even though the page 452 he mentions speaks about the lesser grey shrike (Lanius minor L).

Furthermore, this fool, not to say more, again referring to Brehm, claims that the jay belongs to the fifteenth family of corvid birds, even though Brehm classifies the ravens themselves in the seventeenth family, to which the rooks and jackdaws indeed belong, but this rude creature has even called me a jackdaw (colaeus) from the magpie tribe, a roller bird from the sub-family of empty straw-thrasher, even though the mentioned page speaks only about wood jays and pied magpies.»

— Wood jays, — sighed the publisher, feeling his head. — Give it here, I will read on!

I got scared, because his voice sounded completely hoarse as he read:

«Hummingbirds or Turkish tits will also be hummingbirds in Czech, just as the mistle thrush is the mistle thrush (Turdus pilaris).»

— The mistle thrush should be called a juniper thrush or a thrush-bird, Mr. Boss,— I objected,— because it feeds on juniper berries.

Mr. Fuchs threw the newspaper onto the table and crawled under the billiards table himself, hoarsely repeating the last read words:

— Turdus, hummingbirds.

— There are no jays,— he started screaming from under the billiards table,

— The nutcracker bites, gentlemen!