LETTER TO WILLIAM SWAINSON, ESQ. 515 



Your nomenclature has caused me the jaw-ache. 



Gampsonyx Swainsonii, Lophophorus, Tachipetes, Pachycephala, 

 Thamnophilinae, Dendrocolaptes, Myi'agra rubiculoides, Ceblepyrinae, 

 Ptilonorynchus, Opistholophus, Palseornis, Meliphagidae, Eurylaimus, 

 Phalacrocorax, and a host of others. 



Your criticisms are really unpardonable. 



What you have given us in the book before me, concerning Mr 

 Audubon, is utterly at variance with that which you gave on his first 

 arrival amongst us.* You have thought fit to laud one man ex- 

 ceedingly for his zoological acquirements, who, to my certain know- 

 ledge, paid other people for the letterpress and drawings which were 

 to appear in his work. You raise expectations in your readers, that 

 ornithological information from Demerara (information "passed over 

 by the mere Amateur ") will be procured ere long by an individual 

 engaged in an exploring expedition up the country; when you ought 

 to be aware that the very nature of an exploring expedition precludes 

 the possibility of procuring satisfactory information of birds, whose 

 economy is so varied, whose nidification is so mysterious, and whose 

 plumage is so perpetually on the change. 



I myself have passed years in the heart of that country ; still I 

 could never obtain the least insight into the incubation of the Chat- 

 terers ; whilst the appearance of some birds, and the disappearance 

 of others, without any visible cause, used to puzzle me beyond 

 measure. 



I have killed the large gray pelican on the coast of Paumaron, 

 where it never breeds ; but I was told that I should find its nest at 

 the mouth of the Oronoque. The Indians there knew nothing of 

 its nidification ; and though the bird was plentiful at Antigua, not a 

 soul could direct me to its breeding-place. 



Under these apparently insurmountable embarrassments, I could 



* In July 1828, Mr Swainson tells us that Audubon " drank of the pure stream 

 of knowledge at its fountain head." See his criticism appended at the end of 

 Audubon's "Biography of Birds." In 1836, Mr Swainson tells us that Audu- 

 bon's " scientific descriptions are destitute of that precision and detail which 

 might have been expected in these days." See Lardner's " Cabinet Cyclopaedia, 

 Natural History of Birds," by William Swainson, Esq., vol. u ALAS ! POOR 

 AUDUBON ! 



