72 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 



Rattlesnake, 3 which was read before the Wernerian So- 

 ciety of Edinburgh in the winter of 1827 and published 

 by Robert Jameson in the New Philosophical Journal 

 in April of that year. The controversy then started 

 was long and bitter, while the merits of neither side 

 were ever fully established ; in the history which follows 

 we shall see that the naturalist was, on the whole, more 

 sinned against than sinning. 



In July, 1828, Dr. Thomas P. Jones 4 appropriated 

 Audubon's Rattlesnake article, and published it without 

 acknowledgment in the Franklin Journal and American 

 Mechanics' Magazine at Philadelphia. It should be no- 

 ticed that at the close of 1827 Audubon's famous plate 

 of the Mocking Birds defending their nest against the 

 sinister designs of this formidable reptile had also been 

 published in London. In this remarkable picture the 

 rattlesnake was represented coiled about the nest, at the 

 fatal moment when ready to strike its bold defenders, 

 and in a tree. The anomaly was apparent, for the climb- 

 ing habits of rattlesnakes were not then generally un- 

 derstood. This circumstance, together with some of Au- 

 dubon's notes, repeated in certain cases from stories cur- 

 rent in rural communities, furnished his detractors with 

 a powerful lever, which they seized with avidity ; snakes 

 coiled in trees seemed suddenly to have produced a brood 

 of another order which lurked in the grass, and it was 

 many years before Audubon heard the last of his snake 

 stories. The attack in the American press was laid to 

 the door of George Ord, and it was not long before it 

 was renewed with great vigor by his friend and corre- 



3 See Bibliography, No. 21. 



4 At one time superintendent of the Patent Office at Washington, and 

 professor in the medical department of Columbia College; he was later 

 professor of mathematics in the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia and 

 editor of the Franklin Journal, and American Mechanics' Magazine. 



