142 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 



My Friends^ erton, Ord & Co. keep up their curious 

 animadversions against me still methinks they must be shock- 

 ingly mortified at my stubborn silence toward them. Some 

 unknown friends now & then reply to their absurdities. * 



His persistent heckler, Charles Waterton, was quite 

 busy at this time, four articles having been directed 

 against Audubon or his friends in 1835, though this was 

 not his most prolific year. A similar reference occurs 

 in a letter written to Bachman from Edinburgh on the 

 20th of July: "As to the rage of Mr. Waterton, or the 

 lucubrations of Mr. Neal, who by the bye is a subscriber 

 to the Birds of America (bona fide), I really care not a 

 fig all such stuffs will soon evaporate, being mere 

 smoke from a Dung Hill." 



In the summer of 1835 Audubon was again estab- 

 lished in Edinburgh and working with unremitting vigor 

 at his Biography; some idea of the speed which he main- 

 tained when able to devote himself unreservedly to this 

 task can be gathered from the fact that after the issue 

 of his second volume, of 620 large pages, in December, 

 1834, the third, of 654 pages, was published in just a 

 year from that time. He wrote to Edward Harris from 

 Edinburgh on the 5th of July, when engaged in this 

 work: 



I intend to write a few ["Episodes"] of such extraordinary 

 men, now deceased, with whom I have been acquainted Thomas 

 Bewick, and Baron Cuvier, for example. 



We receive no new subscribers in Europe. The taste is 

 passing for Birds like a flitting shadow Insects, reptiles and 

 fishes are now the rage, and these fly, swim or crawl on pages 

 innumerable in every Bookseller's window. When this is also 

 passed, naturalists will have to turn over a new leaf and com- 

 mence afresh, or go to the antipodes in search of materials to 



