BIRDS OF THE CAMBRIDGE REGION. 



79 



' At the conclusion of a piece of work,' says one who has been most intimate 

 with him, ' I have seen him rise from his chair, approach the stove, and, in his 

 own peculiar way, put his hands behind his back, and, for an hour or two, pour 

 forth a torrent of narrative and scientific facts on which was the cast of his own 

 philosophical thoughts and conclusions. I have frequently seen him in social 

 circles, when he was the delight of the company, from his cheerful and natural 

 replies to all interrogatories, and his voluntary details upon the subject of his 

 travels and adventures.' " 



Although Nuttall made long and arduous journeys through wild and 

 remote regions, enduring hardships of every kind with admirable patience and 

 equanimity, he seems to have been ill-fitted in some respects for leading an 

 adventurous life. Thus we are told by Durand that " he had the utmost horror 

 of the Indians," ' and that once, when he was warned that they were about to 

 attack his party, his gun, which "had been freely used to uproot plants " was 

 found to be " filled with gravel to the muzzle." ^ On another occasion when he 

 had lost his way he mistook some friendly Indians, who had been sent to assist 

 him, for hostile savages, and, in his attempts to elude them, passed three days 

 without food or sleep. 



Nuttall was a naturalist of the old school, and a very good one, too. His 

 interests took a wide range, for, while he devoted himself chiefly to plants, 

 he also gave much attention to birds and was by no means without curiosity 

 and knowledge respecting shells and minerals. As a botanist he so distin- 

 guished himself that Durand wrote of him soon after his death : " No other 

 explorer of the botany of North America has, personally, made more discov- 

 eries ; no writer on American plants, e.xcept jierhaps Professor Asa Gray, has 

 described more new genera and species." ^ This is higher praise than can be 

 truthfully given to Nuttall's work in ornithology. Indeed his only book on 

 birds, the 'Manual,' is largely a compilation. Besides including borrowed state- 

 ments and quotations for which he gave full credit, and much general matter 

 which he made in a sense his own by re-writing it, he took long passages without 

 acknowledgment and with but comparatively slight verbal changes from Wilson.* 

 Many instances of this might be cited. Some of the best are furnished by 

 Nuttall's life histories of the Wood Duck and Black Skimmer which were 

 taken almost wholly, and those of the Mockingbird, Black Duck, Green Heron 



' E. Durand, Biographical Notice of tlie lale Thomas Nuttall, l'roceeding.s of the American 

 Philosophical Society, VII, i860, 307. 



' /bid., 30S. 



^ Ibid., 315. 



•"This fact was first brought to my attention several years ago by that diligent and appreciative 

 student of Wilson, Mr. Walter Faxon. 



