Few have enjoyed the opportunity of benefiting by the advice and assistance of a scientific friend so much as yourself; and no one, I must be allowed to say, has evinced so little inclination to profit by it. When I call to mind the repeated offers I have made you to correct the nomenclature of your birds, from the first time of our acquaintance, and recollect the dislike you appeared to have to receiving any such information or correction, I cannot but feel perfect surprize at you now wishing to profit by that aid, you have hitherto been so indifferent about.
Let me however urge upon you one advise which, for your own sake, I should be sorry you despised. It is to characterize yourself, or get some friend to do so for you, all your new species. The specimens, you tell me, are now in England, & the task will be comparatively easy. I urge this, because you may not be aware that a new species, deposited in a museum, is of no authority whatsoever, until its name and its character are published. I have repeatedly set my face against such authorities, so has Mr. Vigors, so has Ch. Bonaparte, and on this head we are all perfectly unanimous. Unless, therefore, this is done, you will, I am fearful, loose the credit of discovering nearly all the new species you possess, and this I again repeat, for your own sake I should be sorry for. To me, individually, your not doing so, would rather be advantageous.
The more a book is quoted, the more is its merits admitted, and its authority established. it was on this account I so repeatedly requested the use only, of a copy of your book, that it might have been cited in "Northern Zoölogy"[100] not having it—I could not therefore mention it.
I shall always be as thankful to you as formerly for any information on the habits, economy, and manners of birds; but, as to species, I want not, nor do I ever ask, the opinions of any one. that is quite a different matter, and entertaining peculiar ideas on that subject, you must not feel surprised at my differing from you in almost every instance. My reasons will always be laid before the public. In the present case, we totally differ about species of Woodpeckers. I shall not, however propitiate a favourable opinion from you, or any one, by a compliment and therefore I will wait for some species which you yourself will admit, which I shall then give your name to, I am rather glad you did not accept my offer, for I am now assisting in bringing out an Octavo edition of Wilson, by Sir W Jardine which will be arranged according to my nomenclature.
Yours my dr Sir
Very faithy
W Swainson
The letter just quoted naturally served as a check to their intimacy, but Audubon did not withdraw his friendly hand, as shown by his letters to follow later, though his answer to this has not been preserved.[101]
Audubon reached Edinburgh early in October, soon after receiving Swainson's decisive reply, and immediately made an arrangement with MacGillivray, as already related.[102] It is evident from Swainson's letter that when Audubon called upon him for editorial aid, he was by no means ready to defer to him wholly in the matter of naming his birds, a subject in which Swainson regarded himself as the first of living authorities. Swainson's pride was also wounded at Audubon's apparent lack of appreciation of the weight which his name would carry if allowed to grace the title pages of his works, and he speaks of Audubon as if he were ready to bargain for scientific information but determined to withhold that credit which is every writer's just due. It is only fair to say that Swainson's vanity seems to have outrun his candor, for when the controversy over the authorship of Audubon's Biography of Birds was started in 1833, he publicly denied that any such proposal had been made.[103] According to Swainson's own statement, quoted earlier, Audubon was ready to grant him whatever credit was due, but it is evident that he was not then disposed to adopt Swainson's peculiar ideas upon the classification of birds or to enter upon a thoroughgoing arrangement of joint authorship. Though no philosopher himself, it seems clear that the American woodsman was by no means disposed to swallow all the vagaries of the "Circular System" to which his friend was committed, and which was later held up to ridicule.
The craze for describing new species of animals was all too common in both England and America at the time of which we write; the chief aim of many naturalists seems to have been to attach their names to as many of nature's forms as possible. Swainson, who "never went to bed without describing a new species," as Audubon said at a later time, had admonished his friend above all else to hasten to publish descriptions of every new bird which he had obtained in America, lest he lose credit for the discovery; but Audubon, who had not hesitated to poke fun at the species-mongering Rafinesque, was still inclined to look with disdain upon work of this sort. He not only rejected Swainson's advice but answered it rather tartly in the first volume of his letterpress, which appeared in the following year. A passage which caused the naturalist no little annoyance on another score was as follows:[104]
Since I became acquainted with Mr. Alexander Wilson, the celebrated author of the well known and duly appreciated work on American Birds, and subsequently with my excellent friend, Charles Lucien Bonaparte, I have been aware of the keenness with which every student of Natural History presses forward to describe an object of his discovery, or that may have occurred to travellers in distant countries. There seems to be a pride, a glory in doing this, that thrusts aside every other consideration; and I really believe that the ties of friendship itself would not prevent some naturalists from even robbing an old acquaintance of the merit of first describing a previously unknown object. Although I have certainly felt very great pleasure, when, on picking up a bird, I discovered it to be new to me, yet I have never known the desire above alluded to. This feeling I still cherish; and in spite of the many injunctions which I have received from naturalists far more eminent than I can ever expect to be, I have kept, and still keep, unknown to others, the species, which, not finding portrayed in any published work, I look upon as new, having only given in my Illustrations a number of them proportionate to the drawings of already known species that have been engraved. Attached to the descriptions of these, you will find the place and date of their discovery. I do not, however, intend to claim any merit for these discoveries, and should have liked as well that the objects of them had been previously known, as this would have saved some unbelievers the trouble of searching for them in books, and the disappointment of finding them actually new. I assure you, good reader, that, even at this moment, I should have less pleasure in presenting to the scientific world a new bird, the knowledge of whose habits I do not possess, than in describing the peculiarities of one long since discovered.
It is a pity that Audubon did not maintain so admirable an attitude towards the description of new species as was here expressed, but at the close of his career in England, when he desired to make his work on American ornithology as complete as possible, he appeared as keen to describe and publish new birds as any of his contemporaries.