Burns — On Alexander Wilson. 17 



down the great Ohio. Wilson was twenty-two days enroute 

 from Pittsburgh and while he made frequent side trips, he 

 more than doubled the speed of a house beat, in his small 

 skiff. 



Audubon was on his wedding trip and the exact date of 

 the capture of this bird did not greatly concern him. Coues 

 says : "He was often careless and unreliable in his statements 

 of fact, which often led him to being accused of falsehood."^ 



Audubon writes of "Alexander Wilson the naturalist — not 

 the American naturalist." There is an undeniable tinge of 

 jealousy in more than one passage in his journals. Upon 

 what ground Burroughs judged that Wilson looked upon 

 Audubon as his rival, while at the same time admitting that 

 "in accuracy of observation, Wilson is fully his equal, if not 

 his superior," is problematical. It seems absurd in view of 

 the assurance Audubon had given Wilson that he did not in- 

 tend to publish. And why should he accept one in preference 

 to the other's statement, while questioning the former's 

 veracity in one of his tales of adventure, which "sounds a 

 good deal like an episode in a dime novel, and may be taken ■ 

 with a grain of allowance.- If Audubon acted inconsiderately 

 toward the humbler, less assertive Wilson, he ignored the 

 unbending Ord, considered the devoted Lawson garrulous, 

 intimated that the scholarly Bonaparte was exceedingly ignor- 

 ant in regard to our birds, considered himself badly used by 

 the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences, although he 

 had been given access to its latest acquisitions, thereby mis- 

 quoting and smothering the gentle, capable Townsend, who 

 had made the shipments of the bird skins from the west ; and 

 even proposed purchasing Swainson's talent as he would a 

 portrait, transferring his work to his own." Truly, with the 

 silent, subsidized partnership of the learned MacGillivray, it 

 would seem that a monopoly of American ornithology was 

 no idle dream in those days. 



^ Fourth lastallment of Ornithological Biblograpliy, Proc. U. S. Nat. 

 Mus., Vol. II, p. 39G. 



^ Burroughs' John James Audubon. 



= Gill's William Swainson and His Times, V. Osprey, Vol. IV, p. 171. 



