AUDUBON AND RAFINESQUE 291 



had joined him in the enterprise. At Shippingport he 

 was welcomed by the Tarascon brothers, flour mer- 

 chants, formerly of Marseilles and Philadelphia, and it 

 was through them, possibly, that he first heard of Audu- 

 bon's drawings of birds. 



Such was the "odd fish" who a little later greeted 

 Audubon on the river bank at Henderson. Had Audu- 

 bon known the true history of his visitor either then or 

 at a later time, he would not, we believe, have held him 

 up to ridicule in the "Episode" quoted above, and could 

 he have foreseen the unpleasant consequences that 

 ensued, his conduct would assuredly have been different. 

 A part of the episode, which Audubon does not relate, 

 was supplied by another naturalist at a much later day. 5 

 Audubon, it seems, was at that time a good deal of a 

 wag, and whether to vent his dislike of species-mongers, 

 to avenge the loss of his violin, or to gratify some spirit 

 of mischief, he played upon the credulity of his guest, 

 in a way that could be deemed hardly creditable, in 

 giving him detailed descriptions and even supplying 

 him with drawings of sundry impossible fishes and mol- 

 lusks. Rafinesque took the bait eagerly, duly noted 

 down everything on the spot, and, what was more un- 



5 See David Starr Jordon (Bibl. No. 183), Popular Science Monthly, 

 vol. xxix (1886). "The true story of this practical joke was told me 

 by the venerable Dr. Kirtland, who in turn received it from Dr. Bach- 

 man;" the latter, I might add, was the friend and correspondent of the 

 "Sage of Rockport" after a visit at his home near Cleveland in the 

 summer of 1852. In the private notebooks of Rafinesque copies of Audu- 

 bon's drawings are still to be seen, and "a glance at these," said Dr. Jordon, 

 "is sufficient to show the extent to which science through him has been 

 victimized." 



Audubon was also responsible for a number of extraordinary "new 

 species" of birds, the most notorious of which was the Scarlet-headed Swal- 

 low, of which Rafinesque published the following account in 1820: "Hirundo 

 phenicephala. Head scarlet, back gray, belly white, bill and feet black. 

 A fine and rare swallow seen only once by Mr. Audubon near Henderson, 

 Kentucky . . ." See Samuel N. Rhoads, "Constantine S. Rafinesque as an 

 Ornithologist," Cassinia, No. XV (Philadelphia, 1911). 



