Retrospective Criticism. 71 



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 astonish- 

 ing 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 some- 

 times 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 em- 

 ployed 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<rbird, 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." 



p 4 



