LETTER TO W. SWAINSON, ESQ. 195 



tents of one of your former letters to me. I had sent 

 you some pages, replete with notices, on the habits of 

 birds in Demerara. For this you returned me abundant 

 thanks ; and having highly complimented me on the 

 extent of my ornithological knowledge, you begged hard 

 for a fresh supply; adding at the time, that I should 

 thus be of the utmost service to you, as you had a- project \ 

 in your head of writing the history of the Demerara 

 birds. 



Knowing that you had never been in that country, 

 this piece of information so astounded me, and appeared 

 to me so presumptuous withal, that I began to think it 

 was high time to drop the correspondence. 



By the way, when you and I did correspond, that was 

 the proper time for you to have informed me that my 

 solution of corrosive sublimate in alcohol had failed*; 

 and then I would have gently pointed out to you the 

 error into which you had fallen. But, after I had im- 

 parted the discovery to you, in so liberal and so friendly 

 a manner, say, was it generous in you to have sealed 



* " I made the following experiment with Mr. Waterton's 

 composition when in Brazil. The ants which swarmed in a 

 room I inhabited at Pernambuco had committed great de- 

 vastation amongst the prepared insects and birds. Whilst 

 preserving one of the latter, I cut off a piece of the flesh, and 

 after saturating it with the composition, laid it on the path 

 which led to one of their holes. The little creatures seemed 

 at first to be somewhat suspicious of its wholesomeness ; but 

 after walking about and upon it, and examining it with their 

 antennae, they seemed to pronounce a favourable verdict, for 

 one and all began dragging it away to the entrance of their 

 nest, where it soon disappeared beneath the earthen floor. 

 The experiment was repeated three times, and the same result 

 followed. The mixture had been brought from England, and 

 I had no reason to believe that it was defective in the prepar- 

 ation," &c. — See Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopedia, Natural Hist, 

 of Birds; by W. Swainson, Esq., vol. i. 



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