SIDELIGHTS ON CONTEMPORARIES 117 



i 

 "affinity," or "homology," to use the more modern word, 



vitiated most of their writings ; abler men played with it 

 for a time, only to cast it aside, and no one but a historian 

 or a psychologist would now give it a passing thought. 



So far as Swainson was concerned, Audubon's con- 

 duct appears to have been above reproach, and it must 

 be regarded as fortunate that this ardent "Quinarian" 

 did not have a hand in the Biography of Birds, for if 

 it were really true that Audubon could have brought 

 himself to accept the artificial system then in vogue, 

 American ornithology, as Elliott Coues remarked, es- 

 caped a great affliction. 



Swainson's early life affords a striking illustration 

 of nepotism, and his later years reflected some of its dis- 

 astrous consequences. At fourteen he was appointed as 

 a junior clerk in the Liverpool Customs House at a 

 salary of eighty pounds a year, to service under his 

 father, who had in turn succeeded his grandfather in the 

 office of Collector. At eighteen he received an appoint- 

 ment in the commissary department of the English army 

 and went to Sicily, where he remained eight years, dur- 

 ing w r hich he worked industriously at natural-history 

 pursuits. Having attained the rank of Assistant Com- 

 missary-General, at twenty-six he was retired on half- 

 pay because of ill health. Upon returning to England 

 he became a member of the Linnaean Society, in 1816, 

 before his departure for Brazil, where with Henry Kos- 

 ter he collected birds for nearly two years. Having 

 settled again at Liverpool, he entered the Royal Soci- 

 ety, on the recommendation of Sir Joseph Banks, in 

 1820, the year in which he began to publish the results 

 of his studies. Swainson was married in 1825, but upon 

 the death of his father in the following year, his income 

 was so much reduced that he resorted to authorship as 



