LETTER TO W. SWAINSON, ESQ. 203 



least gain you the appellation of "Amateur" from the 

 pen of supercilious theorists, — an honour not to be 

 sneezed at in these our latter times. 



During your peregrinations, should you chance to fall' 

 in with your American friend, — who, you inform us, has 

 pursued painting and the study of Nature "with a 

 genius and an ardour of which, in their united effects, 

 there is no parallel," — do not fail to ask him how it 

 came to pass that when he added so largely to the wing 

 of his bird of Washington, he quite forgot to supply its 

 tail with a proportional elongation. 



If you find him communicative and in a good humour, 

 you might have a chat with him about his great horned 

 owl, which, "at the least noise, erects the tufts of its 

 head." Our owls depress their tufts when disturbed. 

 But, for the life of you, don't say one word about the 

 multifarious group of wild beasts, which were present 

 till after day-break at the great pigeon slaughter ; where, 

 he says, the noise was so deafening, that "even the 

 reports of the guns were seldom heard." This would 

 put him out of temper, and it might lead to " unjusti- 

 fiable personalities," by seeming to question his veracity. 



I trust you are now convinced that, when you feel 

 averse to place a man's name in a favourable point 

 of view, and at the same time have no absolute necessity 

 for putting it in an unfavourable one, the safest plan to 

 be pursued is to place it in no view at all. Had you 

 not introduced me to Doctor Lardner in so unhandsome 

 a manner, I should have been the last man in the world 

 to interrupt you in your complicated theory of circles, 

 and of types primary, types aberrant, types grallatorial, 

 types tenuirostral, types rasorial, and types suctorial. 



In truth, I should really consider it lost time in me 

 were I to descant on the incomprehensibility of your 



