520 LETTER TO WILLIAM SWAINSON, ESQ. 



spectres, without any one feature remaining similar to those which 

 they possessed in life. 



By rejecting the solution of corrosive sublimate in alcohol, you 

 have most effectually deprived the operator of a threefold and an 

 essential advantage. By assuming the arsenic soap, you have ex- 

 posed him to injure his own teeth ; whilst the adhesion of the soap 

 itself to the inside of the skin which he is preparing will indubitably 

 frustrate every attempt to restore the original form and features. 



Will you meet me in some public lecture-room, and argue this 

 matter ? I will produce proof sufficient to satisfy the most incredu- 

 lous person that I am right in what I have just advanced ; and ere 

 we leave the room, I trust that I shall be able to show how much I 

 have gained by resorting to the field of Nature, and how much you 

 have lost by retiring from it. 



Perhaps nothing will operate so much against you, in your zoo- 

 logical career, as your unlucky encomiums on the drawings, and on 

 the supposed writings, of Mr Audubon. Of the first (talking of his 

 publication), you remark that it exhibits " a perfection in the higher 

 attributes of zoological painting never before attempted." Of the 

 last, you say that his observations " are the corner-stones of every 

 attempt to discover the system of nature." 



Let us peep at the drawing of the rattlesnake, in the act of 

 attacking a mocking-bird's nest. 



After having passed the most puerile praises on that of his Caro- 

 lina doves, you exclaim, " The same poetic sentiment and masterly 

 execution characterise this picture." Poetic most assuredly. The 

 whole group is a mockery of anything that ought to represent a 

 correct and faithful zoological fact. The snake is a fabulous Hydra 

 with its eyes starting out of their sockets ; and only think ! the 

 fangs are actually turned upwards instead of downwards. 



Mr Audubon tells us that he confined a rattlesnake for three 

 years in a cage ; that he was in the habit of feeding it ; and that he 

 measured it with accuracy. Hence we must deem him eminently 

 qualified to describe correctly this well-known reptile. Mr Swain- 

 son, too, a learned doctor in zoology, who constantly refers us to his 

 own works, has no slight pretensions, one would suppose, to speak 

 authoritatively on such a subject. 



