92 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 



has seldom been surpassed, but with this effort his am- 

 munition seems to have been exhausted. 



Charles Waterton, who lived to his eighty-third year, 

 and who wrote nineteen polemics against Audubon and 

 his friends, was probably sincere in his attacks upon the 

 American Woodsman, whom he seems to have regarded 

 as a dangerous charlatan. Waterton was a curious 

 compound of fearless independence, kindness, credulity, 

 pedantry, vanity, and intolerance. He should be given 

 credit, however, for having done much to spread abroad 

 a love of natural history and for his attitude towards 

 an artificial system of classification, then much in vogue, 

 which, though only an amateur, he had the good sense 

 to reject. 



