Waterton maintained that Audubon's drawing of the rattlesnake, to which we have referred, was a monstrosity, "a fabulous Hydra, with its eyes starting out of their sockets," and a point repeatedly ridiculed was his representation of the fangs as slightly recurved, or bent up at their tips. Who had ever heard of such an anomaly? Certainly not the doughty lord of "Walton Hall," who declared that the fangs of poisonous snakes were always curved like a scythe, with their points bent downwards. Waterton prided himself on his knowledge of these reptiles, and certainly was not lacking in self-confidence. According to his own account, he went eleven months in the forests of Brazil without shoe or stocking to his foot, and on a certain occasion in London secured with his hands and removed from its cage a live rattlesnake; but, like so many sophisticated writers on natural history, he took to analogy like a duck to water.
Waterton's statement sounds plausible enough, but obviously could be proved only by extensive observations and comparisons. When Audubon was proceeding up Galveston Bay to Houston, Texas, in the spring of 1837, with his son, John, and Edward Harris, they stopped at the plantation of Colonel James Morgan, near Red Fish Bar. "There, among other rarities," said he, "we procured a fine specimen of the climbing rattlesnake with recurved fangs, which with several others of the same kind, is now in my possession."[65] In writing to Thomas M. Brewer, from Charleston, on June 12 of this year, he alluded to this subject as follows: "I must not forget to say to you that I had the good fortune to procure specimens of my 'Climbing Rattlesnake with DOUBLE recurved fangs' which, I am told, will prove a new genus! and therefore the Messrs. Ord and Waterton—good souls!—will be perfectly delighted at the sight of this strange reptile."[66] Unfortunately a large part of Audubon's collections made upon this expedition were lost. I have seen no other reference to this extraordinary peculiarity, and there the matter seems to have rested until the present time.
Audubon's judgment or memory might play him false, but his pencil, in such a matter, could be relied upon to tell the truth. It is therefore a pleasure to be able to confirm his accuracy in reference to the serpent's tooth, for the true representation of which he was roundly abused during his lifetime. The reader will perceive the point by examining the accompanying photograph, which represents the skull of a large diamond-backed specimen from Florida.[67] In the prairie rattlesnake, and probably in some others, the fangs are sickle-shaped, as Waterton maintained, but upwards of eleven species of rattlesnakes have been found on the continent of North America, and, true to Audubon's disputed drawing and account, in this Florida specimen the fangs are slightly, but very distinctly, bent upwards at their tips! Let nature writers, inclined to the easy path of analogy, remember the rattlesnake's fang, for it teaches a salutary lesson.
VINDICATION OF AUDUBON'S REPRESENTATION OF THE FANGS OF THE SOUTHERN RATTLESNAKE: ABOVE, DETAIL OF THE "MOCKING BIRDS," PLATE XXI (UNCOLORED) OF "THE BIRDS OF AMERICA"; BELOW, THE SKULL OF A RECENT FLORIDA SPECIMEN, SHOWING THE SAME RECURVATURE OF FANG.
As I have not hesitated to speak of Audubon's real or supposed mistakes, I will give another and more striking instance of his tardy vindication. In his plate of the American Swan (No. ccccxi), which was published in 1838, there is represented a yellow water lily, under the name of Nymphaea lutea. Since this lily was then quite unknown to botanists, it was ignored and treated as a fable, or as an extravagant vagary of the naturalist's imagination, until the summer of 1876, when it was rediscovered in Florida by Mrs. Mary Treat. Audubon's long lost lily was then identified and acknowledged by Professor Asa Gray, the botanist, who, with poetic justice, proposed to rename it after the discredited enthusiast, in view of the fact that it had been originally discovered and faithfully depicted by him a generation before.
While the snake controversy was acute in America, another of a purely academic character, which assumed even wider proportions, was started on the smelling powers of the vulture. We have already seen a reference to this in the naturalist's letter to his son, Victor, written at Charleston, where he was conducting with Bachman a new series of experiments to settle the question.[68] The idea, commonly accepted, that the scavengers of the Southern States were possessed of a keenness of scent comparable with that of a beagle hound, had been vigorously combated by Audubon, who showed by numerous experiments[69] that they were guided to their prey by the sense of sight only; thus it was found that they would come readily to the effigy of a calf or sheep painted on canvas and set up in plain view, or to a skin stuffed with straw, but failed to detect their quarry when the dead bodies of these animals were placed on the ground and screened from their eyes, if only by the thinnest cover, though the carrion was calling loudly to the nose but a fraction of an inch away. An attack by Waterton,[70] who hurried to the fray whenever a statement in his jealously guarded Wanderings was called in question, led to a lively tilt, in which the advocates of the nose and the eyes were sometimes humorously referred to as the "Nosarians" and the "Anti-Nosarians," some of the most eminent anatomists of the day eventually taking part.
Bachman felt keenly the aspersions which were cast upon his friend, and in the winter of 1833 he undertook with Audubon the series of experiments to which we have referred. The tests which were then made supported Audubon's statements in every particular, and the faculty of the Medical College of South Carolina were invited as a body to witness them; this they did willingly, and the following memorial signed by all the witnesses present was published by Bachman in 1834.[71]
We, the subscribers, having witnessed several of the experiments made on the habits of the vultures of South Carolina (Cathartes aura and C. atratus), commonly called the turkey buzzard and the carrion crow, feel assured that these species respectively are gregarious, the individuals of each species associating and feeding together; that they devour fresh as well as putrid food of any kind, and that they are guided to their food altogether through their sense of sight, and not of smell.