68 Retrospective Criticism, 



torn 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 reputa- 

 tion, 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 assist- 

 ant ; 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 Audu- 

 bon in the scientific details of his work. 



Systematic arrangement, in moderation, is useful and desir- 

 able; still it would not suit the Wa7iderings, 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 nomen- 

 clature for their opinion on me. Eheu ! I am condemned. 

 Well, it is some consolation, at least, to have one's death- 

 warrant pronounced by the first judges of the land inforo 



