the assistance and correction of a native." (R. B., in VI. 371.) Here I beg to remark, that Audubon told Cuvier that he had resided for twenty years in the woods of America, living in a rude hut, constructed by himself, for the purpose of studying the habits of birds. Now, let us put these twenty years to seventeen, and we get thirty-seven. Then let us take into consideration the time which Mr. Audubon must have spent in his "counting-room" in Louisville, and in buying and selling goods in other places: for be it known that he kept a shop for many years in the United States. This is far from being a discreditable circumstance; I merely introduce it to show that his avocations of a commercial nature might possibly bave interfered with those of a literary nature. The contradictory, ungrammatical, ill-constructed paper, signed "Audubon," on the habits of the turkey buzzard, which appeared in Jameson's Journal for 1826 [reviewed in VI. 162-171.]; in which paper, by the way, Mr. Swainson found a "freshness and an originality," which he pronounced to be "delightful to the general reader," [I. 45.] seems to bear me out in my surmise. Enough. "How blind is that man," said Don Quixote, "who cannot see through a sieve!” — Charles Waterton. Walton Hall, Nov. 7. 1833. Mr. Audubon, jun. (VI. 550.) — How extremely forgetful it was in this gentleman, when he attempted (VI. 551.) a defence of his father's account of the rattlesnake, never once to have alluded, in the slightest manner, to the momentous descent of the large American squirrel, tail foremost, down the rattlesnake's throat! To have touched upon the minor parts of that very startling narrative, and not to have bestowed a solitary word on the tail-foremost feature of it, is as defective in Mr. Audubon, jun., as it would be in a surgeon who should try to dissect the fibrous roots only of a cancer, and leave the cancer itself to eat into the vitals of his unfortunate patient. Nobody doubts that rattlesnakes swallow squirrels; but every body must condemn Audubon's account of a rattlesnake chasing a squirrel, and then swallowing it tail foremost. Tail foremost! Why, as long as this foul stain on the page of Audubon's zoology remains unblotted out, of what use is it in his son to tell me that his father has explored the "Floridas, the Keys, and the Tortugas Islands?" The story of the rattlesnake will always appear against him, as a phan tom of bad omen, and it will warn me how I put confidence in other narratives which may come from Mr. Audubon's zoological pen. Indeed, if even his friends should be rash enough to call me to account for incredulity on future topics, my short and simple answer will be, that Mr. Audubon's story of a rattlesnake swallowing a large American squirrel, tail foremost, still sticks in my throat, and that positively I cannot try to gulp any thing else till they manage to ease me of that foreign body. In the very face of this reptile stinging his father's reputation, Mr. Audubon, jun., has the temerity to hint at fables in the Wanderings. Will he have the goodness to point them out? Should he succeed in proving a fable in one single instance, be it ever so trivial, I will renounce all claim to veracity, and never more write another word to meet the public eye. Mr. Audubon, jun., remarks, that what little information I have given of the American birds is positively useless until I publish an Indian vocabulary. In the same breath he adds, that Azara has given us both the Indian and scientific names of the birds. To crown all, he pronounces Azara “the very first authority on these matters;" after telling us that Azara affects to despise system. Again, he appears shocked at my want of science, just, by the by, after he has most unhappily quoted his father's own words, to prove to us that his father himself stood in absolute need of a scientific assistant; while his friend Swainson fully confirms this arrant ignorance in the great American ornithologist, by telling the world that he was expected to have given assistance to Audubon in the scientific details of his work. Systematic arrangement, in moderation, is useful and desirable; still it would not suit the Wanderings, a work which professes to be nothing but a sketch. Were I to sit down expressly to describe the habits of those birds of which I have a knowledge, I should begin by saying, Preserve me from bewildering Mr. Loudon's readers in the mazes of modern divisions and subdivisions of birds, and hard names, and mathematical sections of bill and toe; till, at last, we hardly dare pronounce a crow not to be a magpie! These arcana of foot and front are, and ought to be, the exclusive property of those "eminent and scientific naturalists of the metropolis," who inspect bird-skins in closets. Young Mr. Audubon has applied, in his hour of need, to these grave doctors in nomenclature for their opinion on me. Eheu! I am condemned. Well, it is some consolation, at least, to have one's deathwarrant pronounced by the first judges of the land in foro ornithologico. Lausus, son of Mezentius, was my prototype in the olden time, as far as regards the dignity of my demise. "Be comforted, poor Lausy," said the Trojan, "for behold, 't is the hand of the great Æneas that fells thee to the ground!" "Hoc tamen, infelix, miseram solabere mortem ; Virg. I will now proceed to give Mr. Audubon, jun., proof sufficient that I can detect a fable from genuine ornithology, without having recourse to the pages of Azara, in order to learn my lesson. Ere I commence, however, I must just hint to Mr. Audubon, jun., that he has not succeeded in convincing me of his father's "fair fame." I myself, with mine own eyes, have seen Wilson's original diary, written by him at Louisville; and I have just now on the table before me the account of the Academy of Sciences indignantly rejecting Mr. Audubon as a member, on that diary having been produced to their view. Charles Waterton. 66 Aerial Encounter of the Eagle and the Vulture. (See Audubon's Biography of Birds, p. 163.) Next to the adventure of the rattlesnake and squirrel, I am of opinion that this presents the toughest morsel ever offered to the proverbially wide gullet of Mr. Bull. Audubon says: Many vultures were engaged in devouring the body and entrails of a dead horse, when a white-headed eagle accidentally passing by, the vultures all took to wing, one, amongst the rest, with a portion of the entrails, partly swallowed, and the remaining part, about a yard in length, dangling in the air. The eagle instantly marked him, and gave chase. The poor vulture tried, in vain, to disgorge, when the eagle, coming up, seized the loose end of the gut, and dragged the bird along for twenty or thirty yards, much against its will, till both fell to the ground; when the eagle struck the vulture, and in a few moments killed it, after which he swallowed the delicious morsel." In his strange paper on the habits of the turkey buzzard, Mr. Audubon tells us that if the object discovered is large, lately dead, and covered with a skin too tough to be ate and torn asunder (cart before the horse), and afford free scope to their appetites, they remain about it and in the neighbourhood." Now, reader, observe, that, the dead horse being a large animal, its skin, according to this quotation, must have been too tough to be torn asunder by the vultures, until putrefaction took place. If, then, these vultures really commenced devouring the dead animal while it was yet fresh, Mr. Audubon's theory, just quoted, is worth nothing. If, on the contrary, the horse in question had become sufficiently putrid to allow the vultures to commence operations, then I will show that the aerial account of the eagle and the vulture is either a mere imaginary effusion of the author's fancy, or a hoax played off upon his ignorance by some designing wag. The entrails of a dead animal are invariably the first part to be affected by putrefaction. Now, we are told, that a piece of gut had been torn from the rest, and swallowed by the vulture; a portion of the said gut, about a yard in length, hanging out of his mouth. The vulture, pressed hard by the eagle, tried in vain to disgorge the gut. This is at variance with a former statement, in which Mr. Audubon assures us that an eagle will force a vulture to disgorge its food in a moment: so that the validity of this former statement must be thrown overboard, in order to insure the safety of the present adventure; or, vice versa, the present adventure must inevitably sink, if the former statement is to be preserved. Be this as it may, the eagle, out of all manner of patience at the clumsiness of the vulture, in his attempt to restore to daylight that part of the gut which was lying at the bottom of his stomach, laid hold of the end which was still hanging out of the unfortunate rascal's mouth, and actually dragged him along through the air, for a space of twenty or thirty yards, much against the vulture's will. Now, though the eagle pulled, and the vulture resisted, still the yard of gut, which we must suppose was in a putrid state, for reasons already mentioned, remained fixed and firm in the vulture's bill. With such a force, applied to each extremity, the gut ought either to have given way in the middle, or to have been cut in two at those places where the sharp bills of the birds held it fast. But stop, reader, I pray you: speculation might be allowed here, provided this uncommon encounter had taken place on terra firma ; but, in order that our astonishment may be wound up to the highest pitch, we are positively informed that the contention took place, not on the ground, or in a tree, but in the circumambient air! Pray, how was it possible for the eagle to progress through the air, and to have dragged along a resisting vulture, by means of a piece of gut acting as a rope, about a yard in length? Birds cannot fly backwards; and the very act of the eagle turning round to progress after it had seized the end of the gut, would have shortened the connecting medium so much, that the long wings of both birds must have immediately come in contact; their progress would have been prevented by the collision; and, in lieu of the eagle dragging the resisting vulture through the air, for a space of twenty or thirty yards, both birds would have come to the ground, or the gut would have given way. I have never read any thing in the annals of ornithology that bears any similarity to this aquila-vulturian exhibition progressing through the vault of heaven. Verily, "there is a freshness in it." When we reflect that Mr. Audubon is an American; that he has lived the best part of his life in America; that the two birds themselves were American, and that their wonderful encounter took place in America, we Englishmen marvel much that Mr. Audubon did not allow the press of his own country to have the honour to impart to the world so astonishing an adventure. - Charles Waterton. Walton Hall, Nov. 7. 1833. Audubon's Humming-bird. (See his Biography of Birds, p. 248.)- Mr. Audubon tells us, that in one week the young of the ruby-throated humming-bird are ready to fly. One would suppose, by this, that they must be hatched with a good coating of feathers to begin with. Old Dame Nature sometimes performs odd pranks. We are informed that our crooked-back Dicky the Third was born with teeth; and Ovid mentions the astonishingly quick growth of certain men. He says, in his account of the adventures of Captain Cadmus, who built Thebes (my native town*), that the captain employed some men as masons who had just sprung up out of the earth. I have read Mr. Audubon's account of the growth of the humming-bird, and I have read Mr. Ovid's account of the growth of Captain Cadmus's masons, and both very attentively. I think the veracity of the one is as apparent as the veracity of the other. What, in the name of skin and feathers, I ask, has Mr. Audubon found in the economy of the ruby-throated humming-bird to enable him to inform Englishmen that its young can fly in so short a space of time? The young of no other bird that we are acquainted with, from the condor to the wren, can fly when only a week old. The humming-bird, in every part of its body and plumage, is quite as perfect as the eagle itself; neither is it known to differ in the duration of its life from any of the smaller birds of the forest which it inhabits. Like them, it bursts the shell in a state of nudity; like them, it is blind for some days; and, like them, it has to undergo the gradual process of fledging, which is so slow in its operation, that I affirm, without fear of See the last Number of this Magazine (VI. 552.), in which Mr. Audubon, jun., styles me the "learned Theban." |