THORNS ON THE ROSE 79 



Waterton maintained that Audubon's drawing of 

 the rattlesnake, to which we have referred, was a mon- 

 strosity, "a fabulous Hydra, with its eyes starting out 

 of their sockets," and a point repeatedly ridiculed was 

 his representation of the fangs as slightly recurved, or 

 bent up at their tips. Who had ever heard of such an 

 anomaly? Certainly not the doughty lord of 'Walton 

 Hall," who declared that the fangs of poisonous snakes 

 were always curved like a scythe, with their points bent 

 downwards. Waterton prided himself on his knowledge 

 of these reptiles, and certainly was not lacking in self- 

 confidence. According to his own account, he went 

 eleven months in the forests of Brazil without shoe or 

 stocking to his foot, and on a certain occasion in London 

 secured with his hands and removed from its cage a live 

 rattlesnake; but, like so many sophisticated writers on 

 natural history, he took to analogy like a duck to water. 



Waterton's statement sounds plausible enough, but 

 obviously could be proved only by extensive observa- 

 tions and comparisons. When Audubon was proceed- 

 ing up Galveston Bay to Houston, Texas, in the spring 

 of 1837, with his son, John, and Edward Harris, they 

 stopped at the plantation of Colonel James Morgan, 

 near Red Fish Bar. "There, among other rarities," said 

 he, "we procured a fine specimen of the climbing rattle- 

 snake with recurved fangs, which with several others 

 of the same kind, is now in my possession." 12 In writ- 

 ing to Thomas M. Brewer, from Charleston, on June 

 12 of this year, he alluded to this subject as follows: "I 

 must not forget to say to you that I had the good for- 

 tune to procure specimens of my 'Climbing Rat- 

 tlesnake with DOUBLE recurved fangs' which, I 

 am told, will prove a new genus! and therefore the 



13 



Ornithological Biography (Bibl. No. 2), vol. iv, p. xviii. 



