LETTER TO W. SWAINSON, ESQ. 191 



count of himself, I had a full right to comment upon 

 that account, in order to show to the readers, that the 

 wilful inaccuracies which pervaded his autobiography 

 ought to be a warning to them, how they put implicit 

 confidence in the experiments which he says he made to 

 prove the vulture's deficiency in the power of scent.* 

 You tell us that he has silenced his opponents, and 

 established in the most complete manner, the accuracy 

 of his first assertion. How well he has succeeded, will 

 be seen by the note below. 



If by styling me " an Amateur" you wish your readers 

 to understand that I present my zoological information 

 gratuitously to the public — in contradistinction to your- 

 self, who bring your own to the market ; — then, indeed, 

 the appellation might be received as a compliment ; but, 

 unfortunately, other passages in your work compel me 

 to view it in no other light than that of a decided sneer. 



Let me now take a cursory view of the Amateur 



* " William Sharp MacLeay, Esq., a distinguished natural- 

 ist, and for the last ten years a resident in the Island of Cuba, 

 is now in the United States on his way to London. Talking 

 of the vulture, he said, in presence of Doctors Pickery, Griffiths, 

 Mr. Titian Peale, and the writer of this, that ' Waterton is 

 right, and Audubon is in error. The Aura (vulture) is as 

 common in Cuba as a barn-door fowl, and I am intimately 

 acquainted with its habits. It was a singular coincidence, 

 that on the very day in which I was reading the controversy I 

 had been examining some specimens of the large serpent named 

 Python, and had thrown the carcasses, then in a state of 

 putridity, into a remote part of the garden of my country 

 residence, five miles from the Havanna, a spot so thickly 

 shaded by mango bushes, that it would have been as possible 

 for a vulture to see through a wall as to discover by sight the 

 remains of the serpents ; and yet, in so short a time, I beheld 

 the vultures at a distance, sailing in the air, advancing towards 

 the garden, where they alighted, and regaled themselves upon 

 the stinking Pythons.' " — Extract from a letter dated Phila- 

 delphia, May 18. 1836. 



