77 Oxford Street.
It is interesting to notice that Swainson kept his promise about the woodpeckers, and in 1831 named one, which had been obtained from Louisiana, Picus auduboni;[106] although Audubon later repudiated it, saying that he believed it to represent only an immature state of the common Downy Woodpecker, he returned the compliment by dedicating to Swainson one of his warblers, Sylvia, now Helinaria, swainsonii.
When William Swainson brought to a close his labors on the Cabinet Cyclopædia in 1840, a part of the eleventh volume was devoted to a biography of naturalists.[107] In this little work Audubon was accorded a page, Alexander Wilson received eight, while the author devoted fourteen pages to himself. The talented MacGillivray, whose memorable History of British Birds had then advanced to its third volume, was studiously ignored, and was referred to only in a footnote as "Mr. Gilvray"; but he was of necessity a sharer in the following criticism of Audubon's Biography of Birds: "a want of precision in his descriptions, and a general ignorance of modern ornithology sadly disappoint the scientific reader." The technical descriptions in that work were written, as Swainson must have known, by his young rival, William MacGillivray, then one of the ablest exponents of the anatomy of birds in Great Britain; but anatomy, the master key to relationship, Swainson affected to regard with contempt, though overzealous friends had compared him with Cuvier, one of the greatest masters of anatomy of all time. To follow the comment of a later critic,[108] Swainson probably regarded the title of "the British Cuvier" as rather derogatory, since he had pronounced Cuvier to have been "totally unacquainted with the very first principles of the natural system." To Swainson, however, as the same commentator explains, "the natural system" implied the concept of a magical number and a circle, ideas which Cuvier would have been the first to repudiate or ignore.
The ardent MacGillivray was naturally scornful of Swainson's unscientific attitude, which he had roundly scored in the introduction to his History of British Birds that had begun to appear in 1837; he then said that Swainson could exclaim: "How superficially do we study nature," while in anatomy his own studies were a century behind the times and his opinions on the subject worthy of the Dark Ages.
In his biographical notice of Audubon, Swainson refers to their Paris experience in the following words:
It is singular how two minds, possessing the same tastes, can be so diversified, as to differ in toto respecting the very same objects. During the whole of Mr. Audubon's residence in Paris, he only visited the Ornithological Gallery twice, (where I was studying for hours, almost daily), for the purpose of calling upon me; and even then he merely bestowed that sort of passing glance at the magnificent cases of birds, which a careless observer would do while sauntering in the room.
Audubon, to be sure, was never much of a closet naturalist or an admirer of stuffed specimens; but in reading this criticism of an estranged friend, one wonders if the writer had really forgotten that while his own expressed desire in going to Paris in 1828 was to study in the Museum, Audubon's sole purpose was to extend his subscription list; that after innumerable interviews with ministers of state and running from post to pillar for two months, his friend was obliged to come away with but thirteen additional names or orders for his work. Had Swainson also forgotten that during all that time Audubon acted as his interpreter, assisting him in all his visits and purchases, and that but shortly after, when hard pressed for money, he had called on Audubon for a considerable sum?
As a parting shot to his former friend, Swainson also said:
He can shoot a bird, and make it live again, as it were, upon canvass; but he cannot describe it in scientific, and therefore in perfectly intelligible terms. Hence he found it necessary, in this part of his work, to call in the aid of others; but being jealous that any other name should appear on the title page than his own, he was content with the assistance of some one who, very good naturedly, would fall in with his humour.