^°o?^1 COUKS, Lcllvr from JV. Sxv,ii>isoii lo J. ,/. Aiuluhon. II 



WILLIAM SWAINSON TO JOHN JAMES AUDUBON. 



(^A hitherto Jinpublished letter.) 



BY DR. ELLIOTT COUES. 



William MacGillivray's collaboration with Audubon in tlic 

 production of the ' Ornithological Biography' and of the ' Synop- 

 sis ' is already well known. The case is properly set forth in 

 Audubon's preface, and still more fully in Audubon's Journals, 

 now in process of publication by Miss M. R. Audubon. I have 

 also had more than one occasion to characterize the happy com- 

 bination of these two great ornithologists.^ 



But few can be aw^are that in 1830 there was some chance of 

 William Swainson's becoming Audubon's collaborator, and no 

 little danger that a classification of North American Birds might 

 be made in the mystical jargon of that quinarian fad which 

 Macleay, Vigors, and Swainson had taken up. The following 

 letter, which Miss Audubon has kindly allowed me to copy and 

 use, shows that Audubon had made certain propositions to Swain- 

 son, touching the latter's collaboration ; and that Swainson, who 

 evidently thought no small beer of himself, would enter into no 

 arrangements unless his name should appear as that of co-author 

 with Audubon's. We see him holding off for some such under- 

 standing as that which resulted in Swainson and Richardson's 

 'Fauna Boreali- Americana.' 



" Having sufficiently shuddered at the thought of what we 

 escaped, we can read at our leisure and pleasure Swainson's stiff 

 declination of Audubon's terms, as follows — the letter being 

 printed literally and punctually true to the original in Swainson's 

 handwriting : 



" Tettenhanger Green 



2d October 1830 

 «' My dr Sir 



" I have refrained from replying to your letter until I thought 

 you had returned to London. 



" Either you do not appear to have understood the nature of my 



iBull. Nutt. Orn. Club, V, 1880, p. 201 ; Key N. A. Birds, 2d ed., 18S4, 

 p. xxii. 



