48 Mr Audubon's account of his Method 



cure, seven of the devotees, who were our battalion sepoys or 

 camp followers. In no one instance was pus formed, or did 

 inflammation of any consequence whatever follow ; nor did one 

 quit his duty, or apply for hospital relief. And further, I had 

 reports to be relied on of nearly twenty others from distant 

 villages, whither I sent hospital servants to make inquiries 

 after the poor people who had swung, not one of whom suffer- 

 ed in any important degree beyond a temporary soreness and 

 stiffness in the loins. None but a medical man who has wit- 

 nessed the process could suppose it possible that so little injury- 

 should result from so apparently serious an operation. The' 

 natives of course think it the miraculous interference of the 

 god Cunda Row, in whose honour the torture is endured, a 

 very natural conclusion, for even among our officers, who in 

 great numbers attended to witness the spectacle, there were not 

 a few whom it was difficult to impress with a satisfactory con- 

 viction that the whole was but a natural result from natural 

 causes ; and that the skill of the operator, and the antiphleg- 

 monous habit of his own constitution, was the safeguard of the 

 patient. 



Art. IX. — Account of the Method of Drawing Birds emplcyy- 

 ed by J. J. Audubon, Esq. F. R. S. E. In a Letter to a 

 Friend. 



At a very ^arly period of my life I arrived in the United 

 States of America, where, prompted by an innate desire to 

 acquire a thorough knowledge of the birds of this happy 

 country, I formed the resolution, immediately on my landing, 

 to spend, if not all my time in that study, at least all that 

 portion generally called leisure, and to draw each individual 

 of its natural size and colouring. 



Having studied drawing for a short while in my youth 

 under good masters, I felt a great desire to make choice of a 

 style more particularly adapted to the imitation of feathers 

 than the drawings in water colours that I had been in the 

 habit of seeing, and, moreover, to complete a collection not 

 only valuable to the scientific class, but pleasing to every per- 



