A MEETING OF RIVALS 227 
the specimen. Lawson also affirmed that in engraving 
the plate he had worked directly from the bird which 
Wilson had given him. 
What has become of this mysterious phantom that has 
been a wandering and disturbing voice among ornitholo- 
gists for over a century? It has given rise to no end of 
conflicting and sharp discussions between the partisans 
of the two naturalists chiefly concerned, the only thing 
certain being that if this supposititious species ever ex- 
isted, it has forsaken its old haunts, if not the earth itself, 
and has never returned. No doubt it was simply a case 
of mistaken identity, and both Wilson and Audubon 
were wrong, each having had in hand and mind an imma- 
ture representative of one of our numerous Warblers, 
which are now so much better known.? If Wilson 
copied Audubon’s drawing of the bird, he must have 
replaced it with one of his own, for the figures of the 
two naturalists are very unlike. Certainly Audubon 
should not have made so serious a charge without offer- 
ing more substantial evidence in proof; perhaps what he 
had intended to convey was that Wilson had obtained 
from him his first knowledge of the bird, and he was 
nettled to find that he had been studiously ignored.” 
* Nevertheless so careful and discerning a naturalist as Thomas Nut- 
tall confidently asserted that his friend, Mr. M. C. Pickering, had “obtained 
a specimen several years ago near Salem (Massachusetts)”; see 4 Manual 
of the Ornithology of the United States and Canada (Cambridge, 1832). 
Dr. Elliott Coues at one time thought that it might have been the Pine- 
creeping Warbler, and Professor Baird identified it as the female or young 
of the Hooded Warbler. 
2» Compare Ornithological Biography, vol. iii, p. 203, where in Audubon’s 
article on the Whooping Crane, there is this note: “Louisville, State of 
Kentucky, March, 1810. I had the gratification of taking Alexander Wilson 
to some ponds within a few miles of town, and of showing him many birds 
of this species, of which he had not previously seen any other than 
stuffed specimens. I told him that the white birds were the adults, and 
that the grey ones were the young. Wilson, in his article on the Whooping 
Crane, has alluded to this, but, as on pher occasions, he has not informed 
his readers whence his information came.” 
