March 18. Rise quite refreshed. Find a number of land-speculators here.[194]
March 19. Rambling round the town with my gun. Examined Mr.——'s drawings in crayons—very good. Saw two new birds he had, both Motacillæ.
March 20. Set out this afternoon with the gun—killed nothing new. [People in taverns here devour their meals. Many shopkeepers board in taverns—also boatmen, land-speculaters, merchants &c.] No naturalist to keep me company.
March 21. Went out shooting this afternoon with Mr. A. Saw a number of Sandhill Cranes. Pigeons numerous.
March 22.
March 23. Packed up my things which I left in the care of a merchant here, to be sent on to Lexington; and having parted with great regret, with my paroquet, to the gentleman of the tavern, I bade adieu to Louisville, to which place I had four letters of recommendation, and was taught to expect much of everything there, but neither received one act of civility from those to whom I was recommended, one subscriber, nor one new bird; though I delivered my letters, ransacked the woods repeatedly, and visited all the characters likely to subscribe. Science or literature has not one friend in this place. [Everyone is so intent on making money, that they can talk of nothing else; and they absolutely devour their meals, that they may return sooner to their business. Their manners correspond with their features.]
In this fuller record we learn that Wilson spent five days in Louisville; he examined Audubon's drawings on Monday, March 19, hunted alone on the 20th, went out shooting with Audubon on the 21st, and finally left Louisville on the morning of the 23d; no record was admitted by Ord for Sunday, the 18th, or for the 22d, a Thursday. Wilson noticed the drawings of two new Motacillæ, or Warblers, in Audubon's collection, and it would have been only natural that he should have felt a strong desire to copy them, yet not a word was said about the loan of drawings to which Audubon refers; Wilson merely stated that from those to whom he was recommended he had received not "one act of civility,—one subscriber, nor one new bird." Audubon was evidently regarded as one of the "many shopkeepers" who boarded "in taverns," and not as a "naturalist," for Wilson said that he had none to keep him company, and it is rather significant that Audubon's name is not once mentioned in his Ornithology.
Twenty-nine years after Wilson's visit to Louisville, when Audubon came to publish the fifth and last volume of his Ornithological Biography, he maintained that Wilson had copied his drawing of a certain bird, called the Small-headed Flycatcher,[195] without any acknowledgment. To quote Audubon's words:
When Alexander Wilson visited me at Louisville, he found in my already large collection of drawings, a figure of the present species, which being at that time unknown to him he copied and afterwards published in his great work, but without acknowledging the privilege that had thus been granted to him. I have more than once regretted this, not by any means so much on my own account as for the sake of one to whom we are so deeply indebted for the elucidation of our ornithology.
This troublesome bird was first described by Wilson in 1812, when he rightly pronounced it "very rare," and said that the specimen from which his drawing was made had been shot in an orchard, presumably near Philadelphia, on the twenty-fourth day of April, and that several had been obtained also in New Jersey. His friend Ord, who came to his defense in 1840, confirmed this statement by declaring to the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia that he had been with Wilson on the day in question and had examined the specimen. Lawson also affirmed that in engraving the plate he had worked directly from the bird which Wilson had given him.