If there is an animal in the United States that is known and detested for its peculiarities, it is the skunk. 'Tis in the mouth of almost every one in country places, when a person has behaved ungratefully, abused one's confidence, done a mean action, or been guilty of cheating. According to Appleton's Cyclopædia, it is described (and correctly) as follows," Though weak, timid, and slow in its motions, it is effectually armed against its most ferocious enemies by an acrid and exceedingly offensive fluid, secreted by two glands whose ducts open near the anus sufficient to eject the fluid to a distance of fourteen feet. It is a very cleanly animal, and never allows its own fur to be soiled with its secretion. Its flesh is white and fat, and, if properly skinned, in no way tainted by its secretion; it is highly esteemed by the Indians, and is eaten by the Whites in various parts of the country." Appleton says that its secretion has been successfully employed in some forms of asthma, and for other medical purposes. Its grease is used for rheumatism and diseases of the joints. I have known it to be taken from a skunk for such purposes. Now, turn to what Waterton says about this animal, in his essay on the weasel : At what old granny's fireside in the United States has the writer of this picked up such an important piece of information? How comes the pole-cat to be aware that the emitted contents of a gland should be offensive to all its pursuers?" (p. 227.) He returns to the question again, and says:--" I cannot refrain from asking by what power of intuition the pole-cat is convinced that a smell, naturally agreeable to itself, is absolutely intolerant to man?" (p. 341.) queer question for a "naturalist" to ask. "It now and then happens that we are led astray by our feel ings when we pronounce judgment on the actions of irrational animals" (p. 341), especially when we are asked to "reject the Transatlantic theory as a thing of emptiness,' and agree with Waterton when he says :-" If we are called upon for an opinion as to the real uses of the fœtid gland in pole-cats, let us frankly own that we have it not in our power to give anything satisfactory on the subject" (p. 228). He considered himself an injured man when told he was not a 66 scientific naturalist," when, by his own confession, he could not settle a question that any old Yankee granny can, in common with the cur that sits on her door-step. Was it like a naturalist of any kind to dogmatize on a subject about which he apparently knew nothing, and characterize another's opinion as a "granny's story," without giving one of his own, or showing that he even had the capacity to form one? Under the head of "the dog tribe," he says:-"I have heard and read much of dogs and wolves hunting in packs, but believe it not " (p. 202); and, under the head of "the food of animals," he repeats the idea :-" I consider the stories about wolves hunting in packs as mere inventions of the nursery to keep cross children quiet" (p. 471). That wolves hunt in packs all the time is what I should suppose no one will maintain; but that they never, or do not often, do it, would be as contrary to evidence as anything that could be mentioned. question like that Waterton does not pretend to settle by his own knowledge, nor would he have recourse to that of others, for then he would have become, what he had a peculiar horror for, a "closet natu 66 A ralist." Said he: Whip me, you dry and scientific closet natAuralists" (p. 127), and field ones, too, should such be around. "He did not recast the information picked up from books; he did not even 66 retail the hearsay collected on following passage from Hunter As an instance of his "philosophy," I may give what he says. about the apes on the Rock of Gibraltar. Ordinary people would conclude that these were the de-. scendants of others that had escaped from confinement; but he scouts the idea. "I believe there is nothing on record to show that this establishment of an apish colony had ever taken place" (p. 144); as if that were likely to have been "put on record," when the escape of two apes, unbeknown" to any one, could have done all the mischief! He has recourse to the "portentous circumstance of Europe and Africa being separated by a 66 of na ture," which cut off the apes' retreat towards the South, and left a few of them high and dry on the top of Gibraltar; the only place in Europe where they are found, and where they maintain themselves under the Charles Waterton appeared before the world as a naturalist under the most favourable circumstances. He was the representative of an ancient family, the possessor of a romantic estate, and the owner of comfortable, if not ample, means, and he could have weli afforded to let his Wanderings, which contained much interesting and valuable information, find their way gradually into public favour, leaving others to defend them against attacks made on them, or defending them himself in a dignified way, avoiding the use of names and epithets. Instead of that, he acted the part of a brawler and bruiser, using language inconsistent with the amenities of a man of business, or the courtesies and instincts of a gentleman. If he had studied a little the natural history of his own species to any advantage, he would have been satisfied to have had his work abused rather than not noticed at all; either of which is the common fate of what adds to knowledge, when something has to make way for it; and he would have presented it to the public in a manner calculated to secure its ear sooner or later. In place of that, he gave an ex ceedingly ill-arranged, rambling and wandering account of his adventures and observations, mixed with many simpering sentimentalisms, trifling egotisms, and pedantic quotations, of no earthly use to a large part of his readers; peculiarities seldom or never met with in a character that is judicious and manly, or really amiable. With no sense of consistency, he spoke of the book as having "little merit," yet quoted a high eulogium passed by Sir Joseph Banks on the first half of it, the other half having been written after his death. In the work he described what he called a nondescript, as regards its habits and capture, giving its likeness in a frontispiece; and urged his readers to visit the scenes of his adventures to procure specimens of the same animal; all, as he afterwards admitted, pure fiction, to gratify his spite against the government for charging him, according to law, a duty of twenty per cent. on the valuation of his collection, if it was for private use, and nothing if intended for a public museum! Taking his own account of the occurrence, he was really well treated by the custom-house. If he had landed fifteen years afterwards, and very probably at that time, a donkey loaded with diamonds, the only duty he would have had to pay was ten shillings for the donkey! A man of the world and a gentleman, knowing from experience what all governments are, and possessed of ample means, would have paid the duty, without any ado beyond making it the occasion of agitating for the abolition of it for the future. Had he been a man occupying the position of that of little better than a beggar in the pursuit of natural history, he would have doubtless received the entire public sympathy; and all the more so had he told us how much the "Hanoverian Rats" had devoured of his substance. Besides giving the world the nondescript as a sweet revenge against the Lords of the stantly gloried in, he was a black Treasury, he tells us:-"In fine, it Romanist, dyed in the wool, and is this ungenerous treatment that doubtless a lay Jesuit, who believed has paralysed my plans [robbed in everything of the system as abhim of his available means, so that solutely as the most ignorant and he could not print an additional | blinded devotee, native or foreign; dozen pages of MS.?] and caused and whose particular aversion was me to give up the idea I once had for the "Hanoverian Rats," with a of inserting here the newly-discov- "God rest the soul of Charles ered mode of preparing quadrupeds Stuart." As a naturalist, he seems and serpents. When he found to have been testy and easily that the public classed other matters "riled," as well as spiteful and rein his Wanderings with the nonde- vengeful, self-engrossed and illogiscript, there was no end to his scold- cal, and in the highest degree praging, and almost cursing, every one matical and dogmatical, presumptwho even presumed to differ from uous and arrogant, in matters with him. There was so little tact and which he was evidently little consense, self-respect and good-breed- versant. He says, in writing to ing manifested at the outset of his George Ord, of Philadelphia, when public career, at the mature age of seventy-three years old : -"We forty-three years, and so much that bird-stuffers are a very low set, very was capricious and whimsical, that jealous of each other, and excessivelittle room was left for the display or ly prone to anger and defamation;" development of that principle and which, like most of his opinions, judgment which, sooner or later, must be received with a good deal command the respect or confidence of question or qualification. of the world. was constantly abusing what he called "closet naturalists," who drew their information from books, as an illiterate man abuses newspapers, and sneered at "market naturalists as if they were kitchen gardeners; while in many of his lucubrations he sunk below both, drawing his information, not from books or the con 66 He Any prejudice Waterton may have met with on account of being a Romanist of many centuries standing" he owed to himself, for the reason that he proclaimed himself such in an unusual and uncalledfor manner, and as having had his mind manipulated from his infancy by the Jesuits-a set of men as of-versations of observers, but from his fensive to humanity at large, even imagination, or the "depth of his when they come in the garb of consciousness "-occult attributes, "angels of light," as obnoxious very difficult of defining or dependanimals are to a barn-yard, where ing on. Witness, for example, his everything having a horn in its singular remarks and crude specuhead will stick it into them. Not-lations about snakes, skunks, wolves, withstanding the eulogium he pass- dogs, the food of animals, and suned upon them, as the embodiment of stroke.* the humane and Godlike virtues, he could not have objected to his own language being applied to them when he wrote:- It is said, if you give a dog a bad name, whether innocent or guilty, he never loses it. It sticks close to him wherever he goes. He has many a kick and many a blow to bear on account of it." By his own admission, con *There runs through Waterton's Works a marked aversion to what he called a "closet naturalist," whom he seems to have considered as a natural enemy ; but he did not define exactly what he meant by the term. Taking one view of the question, it could doubtless be said that he would have called him a closet naturalist who quoted himself against himself, in any variation or vagary he might have fallen into in his writings. teachings all is dangerous and impious speculation. His editor is anything but free from the bad taste of calling names and indulging in improper language. He should have apologised for Waterton in that respect, rather than imitated him, after the time that had elapsed. He says:-" In fact, Waterton flogged two generations of quacks, and it would be well if a second Waterton arose with a new rod and a larger " (p. 130); never imagining, when penning these words, that he might have been putting one in pickle, to be laid over the back of himself as well as his friend. He seems to have damned him not with faint, but with fulsome praise, calcu Charles Waterton, however, seems to have been a distinguished man in his way, that is, as a taxidermist or setter-up of animals, and ornithologist, or in anything of that nature that he actually saw and described; but very unreliable in questions of philosophical inquiry, or that required judgment, in matters relating to natural history. In short, he seems to have been "all sight and no scent," with a blessed ignorance of where the one ends and the other begins. His writings generally are poorly put together, and sometimes sadly mixed with extraneous matter, showing the want of a well-trained and scientific mind; notwithstanding which, his works and life, marred as they are by personalities, however much pro-lated to make him enemies rather voked, and especially his establishment at Walton Hall, will ensure his being well remembered by the lovers of natural history everywhere. He says:-"Most men have some favourite pursuit, some well-trained hobby, which they have ridden from the days of their youth. Mine is ornithology, and when the vexations of the world have broken in upon me, I mount it and go away for an hour or two amongst the birds of the valley; and I seldom fail to return with better feelings than when I first set out" (p. 496). This, and what relates to it, and matters connected with natural history in general, seem to have made up his character, for nothing can be drawn from his writings to indicate that anything else of any importance, beyond his religion, attracted him, except some of the Latin poets, whom he quoted to illustrate his subjects and ideas. Perhaps the influence of the Jesuits is here observable, for the end of their teaching is to stunt or emasculate the mind in its higher faculties, and hold it in subjection, limiting its functions in that respect to one idea, viz: THE CHURCH,* beyond whose *Waterton, in his Wanderings, complains of Southey, in his History of Brazil, when referring to the Jesuits, making use than friends. He has no right to characterize him as a man of "acute intellect," or a "profound naturalist," or that all "his observations are so accurate that they delight the profoundest philosopher," for the very opposite can be said of many of them. Waterton says:-- 'I cannot understand how he can make me, at one and the same time, a very observing and an unscientific naturalist of the phrase, "Whose zeal the most fanatical was directed by the coolest policy," brain to comprehend how it is possible in and adds: "It will puzzle many a clear the nature of things, that zeal the most fanatical, should be directed by the coolest policy." If Waterton was sincere in what he said, it would follow that he would have been plucked had he tried to take the degree of "First Wriggler" in the Order. He mentions with great gusto, how he got the better, in a Jesuitical way, of the him for nearly half an hour in grounds prefect at Stonyhurst, who had hunted forbidden to the boys, and "cornered " him. As a last resource, he got the old brewer to cover him with pigs' litter, just as the official bounced in by the gate Have you seen Charles Waterton?" said he, quite out of breath. And his " trusty guardian answered, in a tone of voice which would have deceived anybody, Sir, I have not spoken a word to Charles Waterton these three days, to the best of my knowledge '” (Warne, p. 19). through which he had entered. " |