IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC 55 



clared that one year then would be equal to three, three 

 years from that time. 



Audubon to his Son, Victor 



CHARLESTON, DC., 2/j, 1833. 

 MY DEAR BELOVED VlCTOR : 



Your last letter to us is dated at London, 7 th. Octbr. It 

 has given us all ample and sincere pleasure. The copy of your 

 reply 28 to Mons. Waterton is excellent; that from Swainson 

 ought to prove a death-blow to the Demerara Gent! I hope 

 that these letters are now before the world, for my mortifica- 

 tion has been great enough respecting the blackguardism of 

 G. Ord and others, and yet I am heartily glad that I never paid 

 personally any attention to them through the press or other- 

 wise. Here my friends are as much shocked as myself, and 

 the moment is at hand when these T. . will be glad to find some 

 hiding place to resort to, and wait for time to obliterate their 

 obvious jealousy and falsehood. 



John Bachman and myself have begun a second series of 

 experiments, such as I made before, connected with the nose- 

 smelling of Turkey Buzzards ; as far as we have gone through 

 them, these experiments have proved perfectly satisfactory to 

 my good friend and myself, and depend [upon] it, from next 

 Wednesday, the American World will know that Turkey Buz- 

 zards are first, Gregarious, as well as the Carrion Crow [Black 

 Vulture], that they eat fresh meat in preference to putrid 

 stuff; that they eat birds, fresh killed, either plucked or not, 

 even of their own species; that they suck birds' eggs, and de- 

 vour their callow young; that they come to their food by 

 their sense of sight, and not that of smell, and lastly that 

 they cannot discover by any sense of smell the most putrid 

 matter, even when this putrid stuff is within a few feet of them, 

 out of sight of their eyes. Were Snakes as abundant near 



38 The reference is to Victor G. Audubon's second article in defense 

 of his father, which appeared in London's Magazine of Natural History 

 (see Bibliography, No. 118). Swainson's paper, under the same title 

 (see Bibliography, No. 117), was published in the same number. 



