88 Recent Literature. . [Jan. 



rick has published some interesting parallel accounts by other writers of 

 incidents described by the ornithologist, which differ widely as to detail. 

 He says in commenting upon this discrepancy, " Whenever Audubon went 

 directly to nature to exercise his pencil or brush or wrote with his subject 

 before him, he was truth itself, but in writing offhand and from memory 

 of past events he was wont to humor his fancy disregarding dates as readily 

 as he did the accents on French words." 



A striking example of this carelessness is seen in his unfortunate article 

 ' Notes on the Rattlesnake,' which brought forth such bitter attacks upon 

 his veracity as a naturalist. This remarkable account describes the vene- 

 mous reptile pursuing a Gray Squirrel through the branches of a tall tree 

 and eventually capturing it after leaping to the ground after it. This 

 remarkably detailed account, says Prof. Herrick, " could not possibly have 

 been an invention for it is strictly and minutely in accordance with facts 

 except in one important particular; the snake whose behavior Audubon 

 watched and so accurately described was not a Rattlesnake but the Blue 

 Racer or Black Snake .... by some curious twist of his notes or memory 

 the species became confused in his published account." 



This peculiar trait so well appreciated by Prof. Herrick, has to our mind 

 been at the root of all the unfortunate controversies over Audubon's work 

 as well as of the so called " rivalry " between Audubon and Wilson, which 

 of course did not begin until long after the latter's death. To the scholarly 

 closet naturalist like George Ord, as to anyone trained in the painstaking 

 accuracy of systematic natural history, the freedom and looseness of 

 Audubon's style, the " poetic license " with which he handled scientific 

 matters, was utterly repugnant. They could recognize no natural history 

 but that fostered in the museum. John Cassin, another closet ornitholo- 

 gist had exactly this same idea of what constituted a naturalist and as he 

 never showed any prejudice against Audubon and indeed seems to have 

 been rather friendly disposed towards him, it is interesting to note his 

 opinion of him, which by the way Prof. Herrick does not seem to have 

 given. He met Audubon at the Philadelphia Academy in June, 1845, and 

 wrote to Baird on the twenty-third of that month: " Audubon has been 

 here — do not particularly admire him — is no naturalist — positively 

 not by nature — an artist no reasonable doubt of it." 1 



So the estimates of Audubon will probably vary for all time to come 

 according to the personal temperament and attitude of mind of his critics. 



As to the Audubon and Wilson " controversy " ; to anyone who has care- 

 fully and impartially studied the lives and characters of the two men the 

 idea of comparing them by the same standard of judgment is utterly pre- 

 posterous. They represented entirely different sides of ornithological 

 study and one might as well try to argue, in these days of extreme speciali- 

 zation, who is the greatest living ornithologist, as to say that either of these 

 men was greater than the other. 



1 Leading American Men of Science, p. 80. 



