60 / Mr Audubon's Account of his 



I knew well that closet naturalists would expect drawings 

 exhibiting, in the old way, all those parts that are called by 

 xhem. necessary characteristics ; and to content these gentlemen 

 I have put in all my representations of groups always either 

 parts or entire specimens, showing fully all that may be de- 

 fined of those particulars. 



My drawings have all been made after individuals fresh 

 killed, mostly by myself, and put up before me by means of 

 wires, &c. in the precise attitude represented, and copied with 

 a closeness of measurement that I hope will always correspond 

 with nature'^ Yfhen brought into contact. 



The many foreshortenings unavoidable in groups like these 

 have been rendered attainable by means of squares of equal di- 

 mensions affixed both on my paper and immediately behind the 

 subjects before me. I may thus date the real beginning of my 

 present collection^ and observations of the habits of some of these 

 birds, as far back as 1805, not, however, continued always 

 with the same advantages that attended me during the first 

 ten years that I spent in America, for since then I have often 

 been forced to put aside for a while even the thoughts of 

 birds, or the pleasures I have felt in watching their move- 

 ments, and likewise to their sweet melodies, to attend more 

 closely to the peremptory calls of other necessary business. 



The long journies that I have performed through different 

 parts of the country have been attended with many difficul- 

 ties and perplexing disappointments, some of which have seve- 

 ral times made my mind waver whether I should or should not 

 abandon them all for ever. 



Being quite unknown amongst naturalists, I have had to de- 

 pend on my own exertions alone, without either correspondents 

 or friends. I have followed slowly to be sure, but constantly 

 my object. T have often listened to the different observations 

 of men who accidentally had made remarks on different spe- 

 cies of birds, but seldom, except when with the rough hunters 

 and squaters of the frontiers, have I discovered naked facts in 

 such relations. This has dissuaded me from ever taking any 

 account given me for granted, until corroborated either by 

 my own ocular opportunities or accumulated repetitions. 

 The astonishing tendency that men have to improve nature in 



