John James Audubon

it is a monument to the science of ornithology. The drawings of the birds are very spirited and life like, and their biographies copious, picturesque, and accurate, and,

wove his doings and adventures into his natural history observations. This

ted Grosbeak is a good sampl

ck of provisions, I reclined on my grassy couch. As I looked on the fading features of the beautiful landscape, my heart turned towards my distant home, where my friends were doubtless wishing me, as I wish them, a happy night and peaceful slumbers. Then were heard the barkings of the watch dog, and I tapped my faithful companion to prevent his answering them. The thoughts of my worldly mission then came over my mind, and having thanked the Creator of all for his never-failing mercy, I closed my eyes, and was passing away into the world of dreaming ex

work there; there are four volumes in a set; they are elephant folio size-more than three feet long, and two or more feet wide. They are the heaviest books I ever handled. It takes two men to carry one volume to the large racks which hold them for the purpose of examination. The bir

Five hundred dollars is the average price which this work brings. This was a copy of the original English publication, with the figures reduced and lithographed. In this work, his sons, John and Victor, gre

now occurred to him to make a manikin of a bird, using cork or wood, or wires for the purpose. But his bird manikin only excited the laughter and ridicule of his friends. Then he conceived the happy thought of setting up the body of the dead bird by the aid of wires, very much as a taxidermist mounts

and gesticulate like a Frenchman. It would not be easy to exaggerate, for instance, the flashings and evolutions of the redstart when it arrives in May, or the acting and posing of the catbird, or the gesticulations of the yellow breasted chat, or the nervous and emphatic character of the large-billed w

violent action like Audubon's cuckoo; their poses for the most part are easy and characteristic. His drawings do not show the mastery of the subject and the

gerated. His purple finch is as brilliant as a rose

, or else he was wrong in his drawing of the nest of that bird, in making the opening o

most characteristic poses of that bird, while some of the a

in through engraver and colourists, it ill becomes us to indulge in captious criticisms. Let us rather repeat Audubon's own remark on

his family to "Minnie's Land," on the banks of the Hudson, now known as A

ave a minute account in his "Missouri River Journals"-documents that lay hidden in the back of an old secret

ds," and much of what he saw and did is woven into those three volumes. The trip lasted eight months,

rs of age, and the infirmities of

rs later, and this was practically his last work. The second and

was more an after thought to fill up his time. Neither the drawing nor the colouri

onclusion-his devoted wife, his able and willing sons, were his closest helpers, nor do we lose sight of the ass

passed at his home on the Hudson, amid his children and

and toward the last she fed him. "Bread and milk were his breakfast and supper, and at

speaks of the tender way in which he said to his wife: "Well, sw

ubon in 1846, and gives

ing in the shade of the trees, apparently unconscious of the presence of a few dogs, and not caring for the numerous turkeys, geese, and other domestic animal

. In one corner stood a painter's easel, with the half-finished sketch of a beaver on the paper; in the other lay the skin of an American panther. The antlers of elks hung upon the walls; stuffed birds of every description of gay plumage ornamented the mantel-piece; and exquisite drawings of fie

ead, and a bright penetrating grey eye; his white locks fell in clusters upon his shoulders, but were the only signs of age, for his form was erect, and his step as light as that of a deer. The expression

hand. 'Do you know,' he continued, 'how I wonder that men can consent to swelter and fret their lives away amid those hot bricks and pestilent vapours, when the woods and fields are all so near? It would kill me soon to be confined in such a prison house; and when I am fo

ul simplicity of the man was perhaps the most remarkable. His enthusiasm for facts made him unconscious of himself. To make him happy you had only to give him a new fact in natu

f which had been made when she was with him; her quickness of perception, and their mutual enthusiasm regarding these works of his heart and hand, and the tenderness with which they unconsciously treated each other, all was impressed upon my mem

re so apparent in those of him in his youthful days. What a resolute closing of the

him; like Emerson in his old age, he h

end Audubon! The outlines of his beautiful face and

, in his seventy-sixth year, the "American Woodsman," as he was wont to call hims