DELAWARE VALLEY ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. y 



summer to send him. I could not leave my business in Philada. 

 to go with Audubon notwith'sg my great desire to explore 

 Florida and the Southern States." Another most conclusive 

 proof that Kafinesque did not resent Audubon's joking treat- 

 ment of him at Henderson is his unqualified praise of the Orni- 

 thological Biography in his review of that work on page 35 of 

 the "Atlantic Journal." It may be remembered that Audu- 

 bon's account of " A Strange Visitor," ' to whom he gave the 

 name of "M. Thouville," first appeared in that work, and it is 

 impossible that Rafinesque could not have instantly recognized 

 himself in the portraiture. Taken all in all we owe to Audubon 

 not merely the transparent imposition upon science of the 

 Scarlet-headed Swallow and those impossible new genera and 

 species of Ohio fishes which were confided to and figured for 

 his enthusiastic and insatiable brother Frenchman, but we can 

 thank him also for having kindly entertained a rival naturalist 

 for many days in his own home, despite the loss of his favorite 

 violin, not to speak of the terror of his family during Rafin- 

 esque' s "First-night" scrimmage after a new species of bat, as 

 well as for the pen-picture which gives us such a realistic view 

 of Rafinesque' s personality in the field. To this we may add 

 that Audubon was one of the very few who did not treat his 

 unfortunate brother-naturalist with disdain, neglect or open 

 enmity. Rafinesque thus refers to his visit to Audubon in his 

 Autobiography. He had descended the Ohio to Louisville and 

 thence "took passage in a keel boat * * * but at Henderson- 

 ville in Kentucky I left this boat (too slow) and spent some 

 days with Mr. Audubon, Ornithologist, who showed me his fine 

 collection of colored drawings which he has since published in 

 England." 



Returning again to his published writings we find a long 

 period of ornithological inactivity separating Rafinesque' s bird- 

 notes, already referred to, published in the " Annals of Nature" 

 in 1820, as well as those on bird hybrids published in the 

 ' * General Annals of the Physical Sciences of Brussels ' ' (page 



^ " The Eccentric Naturalist." Ornithological Biography, Vol. I, pp. 465 

 460, Edinburgh, 1831. 



