Shortly after his arrival at Edinburgh, and before he had published anything, Audubon wrote in his journal on November 5, 1826: "I returned home early and found a note from Mr. John Gregg, who came himself later, bringing me a scrubby letter from Charles Waterton," so it would appear that the lord of "Walton Hall" had been warned to keep an eye on the dangerous American, and Waterton's American correspondent was Mr. Ord, of Philadelphia. Later on Waterton wrote to Swainson an extraordinary letter of some four thousand words,[87] afterwards published in his _Essays on Natural History_, which for petty vanity and personal animosity has seldom been surpassed, but with this effort his ammunition seems to have been exhausted. Charles Waterton, who lived to his eighty-third year, and who wrote nineteen polemics against Audubon and his friends, was probably sincere in his attacks upon the American Woodsman, whom he seems to have regarded as a dangerous charlatan. Waterton was a curious compound of fearless independence, kindness, credulity, pedantry, vanity, and intolerance. He should be given credit, however, for having done much to spread abroad a love of natural history and for his attitude towards an artificial system of classification, then much in vogue, which, though only an amateur, he had the good sense to reject. CHAPTER XXIX SIDELIGHTS ON AUDUBON AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES What was a Quinarian?—Controversy over the authorship of the _Ornithological Biography_—Audubon's quaint proposal—Swainson's reply—Friendship suffers a check—Species-mongers—Hitting at one over the shoulders of another—Swainson as a biographer—His career—Bonaparte's grievance—A fortune in ornithology—Labors of John Gould and his relations with Audubon—The freemasonry of naturalists. Few, probably, ever attain marked success in their chosen field without exciting jealous rivalry or misrepresentation on the part of some of their contemporaries. Audubon was no exception to the rule, but in this respect he has been subject to so much misunderstanding that the reader is entitled to know the truth, whenever it can be ascertained. An instance of this sort was furnished by the English naturalist, William Swainson, whose relations with Audubon have been touched upon in earlier chapters.