226 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 



dently regarded as one of the "many shopkeepers" who 

 boarded "in taverns," and not as a "naturalist," for 

 Wilson said that he had none to keep him company, and 

 it is rather significant that Audubon's name is not once 

 mentioned in his Ornithology. 



Twenty-nine years after Wilson's visit to Louisville, 

 when Audubon came to publish the fifth and last volume 

 of his Ornithological Biography, he maintained that 

 Wilson had copied his drawing of a certain bird, called 

 the Small-headed Flycatcher, 18 without any acknowl- 

 edgment. To quote Audubon's words: 



When Alexander Wilson visited me at Louisville, he found 

 in my already large collection of drawings, a figure of the 

 present species, which being at that time unknown to him 

 he copied and afterwards published in his great work, but 

 without acknowledging the privilege that had thus been granted 

 to him. I have more than once regretted this, not by any 

 means so much on my own account as for the sake of one to 

 w r hom we are so deeply indebted for the elucidation of our 

 ornithology. 



This troublesome bird was first described by Wilson 

 in 1812, when he rightly pronounced it "very rare," and 

 said that the specimen from which his drawing was 

 made had been shot in an orchard, presumably near 

 Philadelphia, on the twenty-fourth day of April, and 

 that several had been obtained also in New Jersey. 

 His friend Ord, who came to his defense in 1840, con- 

 firmed this statement by declaring to the American 

 Philosophical Society of Philadelphia that he had been 

 with Wilson on the day in question and had examined 



18 



Musicapa minuta, which appears in Figure 5, Plate 50, of volume vi 

 of Wilson's American Ornithology (pp. 62-63 of the text), and in Figure 2, 

 Plate ccccxxxiv, of Audubon's Birds of America (Ornithological Biography, 

 vol. v, pp. 291-3). 



