BULLETIN 
OF THE 
NUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 
Vol. V. OCTOBER, 1880. No. 4. 
“BEHIND THE VEIL” 
BY DR. ELLIOTT COUES, U. S. A. 
Having lately been there myself, and found it a delightful place 
to saunter in, I will lift a little corner to let the readers of the Bul- 
letin share my enjoyment. 
There is a mine of wealth of inedited Wilsoniana and Auduboni- 
ana at Rockville, Connecticut, owmed and kept with the greed of 
genuine bibliomania by my excellent friend, Joseph M. Wade, editor 
of the “Familiar Science and Fancier’s Journal,” whose hospitality 
I lately enjoyed. How he became possessed of the treasure is a 
long story, needless here to give; suffice it, that the authenticity 
of the papers and drawings is absolutely unquestionable — made so 
no less by internal evidence than by accompanying documentary 
proof. I lived for a day in the shadow of the silent past ; and in 
the watches of the night the spirits of the two great dead seemed 
present in the bedchamber. If any trunkful of time-browned let- 
ters with their fading characters sends thought searching backward, 
when time alone is the wizard, what then of heaps of letters traced 
by hands whose work is world-famous ? — what of the originals of 
drawings, the engravings of which are foremost in the history of 
some department of human knowledge 1 
Busy as I had been for years with the history of ornithology, I 
had seen but a single autogram of the “melancholy poet-naturalist,” 
the “father of American ornithology,” and had never happened to 
lay eyes upon a scrap of the writing of the brilliant Franco- Ameri- 
can who came next to paint our birds, when I received an invita- 
vol. v. 1 3 
