BULLETIN 



OF THE 



NUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 



Vol. V. OCTOBER, 1880. No. 4. 



"BEHIND THE VEIL." 



BY DR. ELLIOTT COUES, U. S. A. 



Having lately been there myself, and found it a delightful place 

 to saunter in, I will lift a little corner to let the readers of the Bul- 

 letin share my enjoyment. 



There is a mine of wealth of inedited Wilsoniana and Auduboni- 

 ana at Rockville, Connecticut, owned and kept with the greed of 

 geniiine bibliomania by my excellent friend, Joseph M. Wade, editor 

 of the " Familiar Science and Fancier's Journal," whose hospitality 

 I lately enjoyed. How he became possessed of the treasure is a 

 long stoiy, needless here to give ; suffice it, that the authenticity 

 of the papers and drawings is absolutely unquestionable — made so 

 no less by internal evidence than by accompanying documentary 

 proof. I lived for a day in the shadow of the silent past ; and in 

 the watches of the night the spirits of the two great dead seemed 

 present in the bedchamber. If any trunkful of time-browned let- 

 ters with their fading characters sends thought seai'ching backward, 

 when time alone is the wizard, what then of heaps of letters traced 

 by hands whose work is world-famous 1 — what of the originals of 

 drawings, the engravings of which are foremost in the history of 

 some department of human knowledge 1 



Busy as I had been for years with the history of ornithology, I 

 had seen but a single autogram of the " melancholy' poet-naturalist," 

 the " father of American ornitholog}'," and had never hapjiened to 

 lay eyes upon a scrap of the writing of the brilliant Franco-Ameri- 

 can who came next to paint our birds, when I received an iuvita- 



voL. y. 13 



