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APPENDIX. 



and proportion. If they should consist of birds, they 

 will come out of his hands, a decided deformity. If of 

 quadrupeds, they will represent hideous spectres, without 

 any one feature remaining similar to those which they 

 possessed in life. 



By rejecting the solution of corrosive sublimate in 

 alcohol, you have most effectually deprived the operator 

 of a threefold and an essential advantage. By assuming 

 the arsenic soap, you have exposed him to injure his own 

 teeth ; whilst the adhesion of the soap itself to the in- 

 side of the skin which he is preparing will indubitably 

 frustrate every attempt to restore the original form and 

 features. 



Will you meet me in some public lecture-room, and 

 argue this matter ? I will produce proof, sufficient to 

 satisfy the most incredulous person, that I am right in 

 what I have just advanced : and, ere we leave the room, 

 I trust that I shall be able to show how much I have 

 gained by resorting to the field of Nature, and how 

 much you have lost by retiring from it. 



Perhaps nothing will operate so much against you, in 

 your zoological career, as your unlucky encomiums on 

 the drawings, and on the supposed writings, of Mr. Au- 

 dubon. Of the first (talking of his publication), you 

 remark, that it exhibits " a perfection in the higher 

 attributes of zoological painting never before attempted." 

 Of the last, you say, that his observations " are the 

 corner stones of every attempt to discover the system of 

 nature." 



Let us peep at the drawing of the rattle-snake, in the 

 act of attacking a mocking-bird's nest. 



After having passed the most puerile praises on that 

 of his Carolina doves, you exclaim : " The same poetic 

 sentiment and masterly execution characterise this pic- 



