106 



THE OSPREY. 



animals. Besides writing" that portion of Sir 

 John Richardson's "Fauna Boreali-Americana" 

 that relates to birds, with Intodiictory "Obser- 

 vations on the Natural System" printed sepa- 

 rately, and furnishing- the article on the S'eog- 

 raphical distribution of man and animals in 

 Hugh Murray's '-Encyclopa'dia of Geography", 

 Swainson contributed three volumes to Sir 

 William Jardine's "Naturalist's Libi'ary", one 

 dealing with the Flycatchers (vol. xvii. 1835), 

 and the others with the Birds of Western Africa 

 (vols. xxii. xxiii. 1837). In 1837, having suf- 

 fered pecuniary losses, he emigrated to New 

 Zealand. On the voyage out he lost a large 

 portion of his collections; but he took advantage 

 of touching at Rio to take various plants to his 

 new home to naturalize. In 1853 he was en- 

 gag-ed by the g-overnments of Van Diem en's 

 Land and Victoria to report on the timber trees 

 of those colonies. Swainson died at his resi- 

 dence. Fern Grove, Hutt Valley, New Zealand, 

 Dec. 7. 1855. 



Swainson was elected a fellow of the Linnean 

 Society in 1816 and of the Royal Society, on the 

 recommendation of Sir Joseph Banks, in 1820, 

 and he was also a member of many foreign acade- 

 mies. By his first wife, a daughter of John 

 Parkes of Warwick, whom he married in 1825, 

 he had five children, of whom four sons sur- 

 vived him, and by his second wife, who also 

 survived him, he liad three daughters. An en- 

 g-raved portrait of him by Edward Francis 

 Finden, from a drawing- b^' Mosses, forms the 

 frontispiece to his volume on "Taxidermy" in 

 the "Cabinet Cyclopjedia." His collection of 

 Greek plants is in the Herbarium of the Liver- 

 pool Botanical Garden. 



As a zoological draughtsman Swainson com- 

 bined accuracy with artistic skill, and his 

 pipers in the "Memoirs of the Wernerian Socie- 

 ty". Tilloch's "Philosophical Magazine", the 

 "Journal of the Royal Institution", Loudon's 

 "Magazine of Natural History", the "Maga- 

 zine of Zoology and Botany", the "Entomolo- 

 gical Mag-azine", and the "Papers of the Royal 

 Society of Van Diemen's Land", of which thirty- 

 six, dealing with ornithology, conchology, en- 

 tomolog-yand trees, are enumerated in the Royal 

 Society's "Catalogue" (viii. 893i, contain des- 

 criptions of man)' species new to science. 



Besides the works already mentioned, Swain- 

 son was the author of [many others]."'^ 



HIS PEKSOXALITY. 



Swainson was a rather good-looking man of 

 medium height, with blackish curling hair 

 which early deserted his front and crown; his 

 features were regular; his face rather weak; 

 sparse side whiskers were cultivated. He af- 

 fected a clerical or quaker garb and manifested 

 strong religious tendencies. 



He was withal a very vain and irritable man 

 and of a "peculiarly nervous temperament", as he 

 himself recognized. He was also troubled with 

 a jealous disposition and thought that the world 

 did not do justice to his merits. A long nour- 



ished grievance was that he did not enjoj' gov- 

 ernment aid or patronage. He was prone to 

 contrast the want of scientific patronage in 

 England with its manifestation on the con- 

 tinent. The decay of science in England was 

 also a favorite theme. He confessed that his 

 "education was unfinished", as might have been 

 naturally expected from his statement that he 

 "showed not the least aptitude for the ordinary 

 acquirements of schools", and yet left school and 

 entered office "at the early age of fourteen." 



He suffered from "an impediment of speech", 

 which he attributed to his "peculiarly nervous 

 temperament"; this, he claimed, "acted as an 

 insuperable bar to the acquisition of languages". 

 Why such an impediment should be a bar to the 

 acquisition of a language is left to us to conjec- 

 ture; utilization is a different matter. How- 

 ever this may be, Swainson's knowledge of 

 languages was evidently very limited, as we 

 learn from Rafinesque and Audubon and from 

 internal evidence furnished b}- his works. 

 Although critical of scientific names proposed 

 by others and prone to give what he considered 

 to be better, many, if not Tuost, of the numerous 

 names he coined, are objectionable for one 

 reason or another. 



For example, he coined such words as Canthi- 

 leptcs and Cant/ii^astrr when he should have 

 written Acaut/iolcpitlcs and Acant/ioffaster, and 

 many others equallj' bad. His inconsistency 

 was sometimes remarkable and made prominent 

 by juxtaposition of names. Thus, he rejected 

 jYvrtirorax (because the Greek Korax primarily 

 meant Raven or Crowl, and substituted for it 

 the hybrid name Ayrtiantca,- directly next to 

 it he added a genus which he named Tigriso))!a. 

 Why "Night crow" should be worse for a heron 

 than "Tiger's body" would not be plain to most 

 persons. He might have learned also that 

 Korax had of old been used in a wider sense 

 than Raven or Crow, and that there was a good 

 precedent for taking the word as Bonaparte had 

 done (from Linnaeus). No less a man than 

 Aristotle had designated under that name a 

 water bird as larg-e as the Stork. The compo- 

 nency had also a classical precedent in the 

 name P/ia/acrocora.r, another one, by the way, 

 which Swainson refused to admit. Notwith- 

 standing these facts A'yrtiarded was allowed for 

 a long time by American ornithologists to 

 supersede Nycticoi-a.w but it was on account of 

 supposed preoccupation of the latter name, and 

 not because they adopted the principle indulged 

 in by Swainson. 



Again, a fish having a superficial resemblance 

 to another generally known as Chroinis had re- 

 ceived from Ruppell the sug-gestive name Pscii- 

 doc/iromis (False Chromis): Swainson could not 

 tolerate such a name, and gave instead the 

 hybrid one La/iristo)na (Wrasse-mouth), though 

 it was not a Wrasse's mouth nor did it have a 

 mouth at all like that of a Wrasse. 



He was, withal, a man of estimable character 

 in many respects. He was conscientious and 

 attempted to live up to his ideas of what was 



*The works mentioned are designated more fully at the end of the present biography. The descrepancies between the 

 sketch in the "Dictionary of National Biography" and the statements made in the present have been taken cognizance of and 

 the statements hereinafter made verified. 



