THORNS ON THE ROSE 89 



this controversy, and in June, 1833, replied 31 to one of 

 Waterton's fulminations, which he attributed to envy 

 and jealousy, saying that posterity would regard Au- 

 dubon as "the most distinguished ornithologist of the 

 present age." 



Charles Waterton began his travels at eighteen, but 

 early settled down to a life of leisurely independence on 

 his ancestral estate in Yorkshire, where he studied birds 

 to little purpose and wrote extensively on natural-his- 

 tory subjects; he is best known for his Wanderings, 32 

 which has passed through numerous editions and is still 

 read. From youth Waterton enjoyed exceptional ad- 

 vantages, and according to one of his biographers, "lived 

 to extreme old age without having wasted an hour or a 

 shilling." He was the twenty-seventh "lord of Walton 

 Hall," the manor house of the family, which stood on 

 an island in a lake; the estate of 260 acres was mainly 

 converted into a preserve for wild birds. His young 

 wife died in 1829, after having given birth to a son, and 

 he lived on his paternal acres in semi-retirement ever 

 after. It was said that Waterton would never don 

 evening clothes or a black coat, but insisted on wearing 

 a blue frock with gold buttons until an anxious police- 

 man in the neighboring village of Wakefield persuaded 

 him to make a change ; he told the Reverend J. G. Wood 

 in 1863 that he had been bled 160 times, mostly by his 

 own hand. When, in his sixty-ninth year, he had the 

 misfortune to fall from a pear tree and break an elbow 

 joint, the first remedy tried was the extraction of thirty 

 ounces of blood; shortly after this a careless servant 

 withdrew a chair as he was seating himself at table, and 



81 See Bibliography, No. 114. 



32 Wanderings in South America, the North-West of the United States, 

 and the Antilles, in the years 1812, 1816, 1820, $ 1824. Originally in 4to., 

 London, 1825. 



