Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Log-book of a fisherman and zoologist / by Frank Buckland. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
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![that the wolves' heads paid as taxes were all buried at this spot. Eemembermg this legend, I at once pro- nounced the picture to represent our ancestors collecting wolves for the taxes. Very good; the painter shows in his drawing what he means. A North American Indian sitting quite alone on the prairie. If the painter has not actually been on an American prairie himself, he has taken the scene from a wonderfully efiective plate in Catlin's North American Indians. Something wanting to interpret the picture. Let's see the details. A pair of deer-horns behind the man (deer horns right for a wonder—Cervus Virginianus); a quiver full of arrows—the man had not been hunting, or there would have been fewer arrows in the quiver ; bow, I believe right; a fire three parts out; logs of wood much too big—I don't see where the Indian could have got such big logs of wood on a prairie. The man is ill—I don't think he has had an accident, certainly not a fracture of a bone, or he would be looking at, or attempting to sup- port, the fractured limb. He has some internal disease, ])Ossibly peritonitis—a man with peritonitis could certainly not ride. Other Indians in the distance are going away at a pretty fast pace. I suppose they are going for the doctor. The man's loose horse following after the Indians. It would have been more poetical if the painter had made the horse appear unwilling to leave his master, thus shaming the men. I peep at a catalogue of some one near, Left to Die is the name of the picture. Poor Indian ! I wish I was there with my medicine chest or surgical instruments, I would try to cure him. He can't be so very bad after all, or he would be lying down.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21930648_0029.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
