370 Retrospective Criticism. 



the unjust treatment which they have received from their 

 contemporaries. While occupied in distant countries with 

 their favourite pursuits, they have sometimes found on their 

 return that envy and jealousy have been busily employed in 

 detracting from their merits, and endeavouring to blight 

 their fair fame, and deprive them of the just reward of their 

 labours. Such is now the fate of a man whom posterity will 

 regard as the most distinguished ornithologist of the present 

 age ; I mean, Mr. Audubon. For the last two years Mr. 

 Audubon has been again exploring the forests and prairies of 

 Western America, encountering all the hardships and dan- 

 gers of savage life, to acquire a more complete knowledge of 

 the characters and habits of the feathered inhabitants of these 

 regions. There are few of your readers to whom the graphic 

 excellence of Mr. Audubon's pencil is entirely unknown. 

 His felicity in seizing the characteristic attitudes of birds, 

 and transfusing into his figures the spirit of life, has never 

 before been attained by any naturalist. Mr. Audubon, it is 

 well known, is engaged in a large, and necessarily expensive, 

 work on ornithology ; but he has experienced the common 

 fate of too many devotees to science ; a part of his reward is 

 snatched from him by others, who pillage from his works, 

 and publish them under another form. Of this, however, he 

 has less reason to complain, than of the envious attacks on 

 his fair fame and credit as a naturalist. I was greatly sur- 

 prised and grieved to see two attacks of this kind, in your 

 Magazines for March and May last, from a correspondent 

 whose Wanderings are always amusing. On these attacks 

 I shall request room to offer some remarks, as Mr. Audubon 

 is not in the country to defend himself, which he is fully able 

 »to do if he could spare time from his favourite pursuits to 

 attend to subjects of a personal nature. Mr. Charles Water- 

 ton's remarks on Mr. Audubon's account of the habits of 

 the turkey buzzard (Fultur Aura) ( p. 163.) occupy seven 

 pages, evidently written to throw ridicule on Mr. Audu- 

 bon's statements respecting the powers of sight and smell 

 "pf that animal, though they contain no facts or arguments 

 "whatever to invalidate the descriptions of Mr. Audubon, but 

 are filled with a series of quizzing interrogatories that are 

 undeserving a serious refutation. I appeal to the good sense 

 of your readers to confirm this judgment. I shall only stop 

 *to remark^ how would Mr. Waterton's Wanderings appear, if 

 subjected to the test of ridicule, or even to the severe ordeal 

 of sober criticism ? Surely the author of the Wanderings^!} 

 South America should have some charity for a brother tra- 

 veller, if required ; but I deny that Mr. Audubon requires 



