466 Retrospective Criticism, 



[p. 372.] insinuates that envy and jealousy have instigated me 

 to blight Mr. Audubon's fair fame. Fair fame ! Has R. B. 

 not read, in Mr. Audubon's introductory address to his Bio- 

 graphy of Birds, that Philadelphia had refused him honours, 

 which Liverpool freely accorded ? Has this mysterious re- 

 mark caused no misgivings in the anxious breast of R. B. ? 

 In publicly accusing me with " endeavouring to deprive the 

 solitary wanderer of that patronage, the expectation of which 

 is the only hope that can cheer his labours," is R. B. too 

 dull to have perceived, in this Magazine [Vol. IIL p. 449., 

 Vol. VI. p. 83 — 88.], that I was under the absolute necessity 

 of defending [Vol. V. p. 233—241., Vol. VI. p. 162—171.] 

 my own statement of the powers of scent in the vulture, on 

 account of what had appeared in Jameson's Journal? and 

 that, as Mr. Audubon's works had been brought forward 

 [Vol. III. p. 449., Vol. VI. p. 83—88.] to speak for them- 

 selves, my easiest mode of defence, at the distance of four 

 thousand miles from vultures, was, to point out the errors and 

 absurdities which those works contained? Is R. B. so rash 

 as to trumpet Mr. Audubon's " high credit" as a naturalist, 

 while there is his name attached to an account of a rattle- 

 snake swallowing a large American squirrel tail foremost ? 



In lieu of taxing me with an attempt to blight the fair 

 fame of his friend, would it not have been more prudent in 

 R. B. to have sent a letter to America, and gently suggested 

 to his friend the propriety of his immediately noticing the 

 attack of Dr. Jones ? hinting, at the same time, that, if no- 

 thing be done in that quarter, the public will have too much 

 reason to refuse credence to future productions from the pen 

 of Mr. Audubon. 



R. B. evidently wishes us to believe that Mrs. Audubon 

 corrected her husband's manuscripts, for he tells us that 

 Mrs. Audubon is well qualified to correct them ; and he lets 

 out that Mr. Audubon could not speak English at the age of 

 seventeen. Now, Mr. Audubon, junior, tells us [p. 369.] 

 indirectly that it is Mr. Swain son's " firm conviction, arising 

 from personal intercourse, and the perusal of original manu- 

 scripts, that Mr. Audubon, and no other person, is the bond 

 Jide author of the Ornithological Biography" (query, were 

 the manuscripts written in French ?) ; and Rennie, who is a 

 scholar and a professor, seems evidently of the same way of 

 thinking ; for he counsels us to "read the works of Audubon.'* 

 By the by, Mr. Audubon himself talks of being on a " trading 

 voyage," and speaks of a " counting-room." With these avo- 

 cations, added to his total ignorance of our language at the 

 age of seventeen, he must be, indeed, a man of parts, to write 



