323 Remarks on Audubon'' s Birds of America, 



a double elephant folio. " Incidit ingens ictus ad ter- 

 ram.'*'' The reason which our author assigns for these extend- 

 ^ dimensions, is his desire of representing the objects which 

 have occupied his pencil, of the size which Nature gave them. 



As other authors have proffered a like excuse for the ampli- 

 tude of their sheets, the delineations on which, nevertheless, 

 hardly convey so accurate an idea of the originals as the dimi- 

 nutive wood-cuts of Bewick, let us see how Mr Audubon ac- 

 quits himself. The first object presented to us is the Wild 

 Turkey, and, in this instance, the paper is barely large enough. 

 The female Turkey, the Bird of Washington, the White- 

 tailed Eagle, and a few others, fill their respective plates. The 

 most beautiful groups, biographical scenes, representations of 

 maidenly coyness, maternal affection, lordly misrule, republican 

 sociality, and, in one instance, conjugal strife, occupy others 

 to the very edges. On the other hand, we sometimes find a 

 single bird, not much bigger than a Tomtit, claiming to itself 

 the whole space of a sheet. Between these extremes there are 

 various means. 



On inspecting the plates in succession, one cannot fail to be 

 struck by the peculiarities which they present. The most un- 

 practised eye must instantly discover something in the aspect 

 and attitudes of the birds, which he has never seen in art, and 

 to obtain which recourse must be had to nature. The cause of 

 this is to be found in the circumstance of the author's having 

 borrowed from living nature. Others draw not from birds but 

 from dried skins. Their representations are as stiff and dis- 

 torted as it has pleased the bird-stuffer to make the originals. 

 Mr Audubon's method of representing birds is as follows. 

 Finding in the woods, the prairies, or the fields, a bird which 

 he is desirous of figuring, he follows it, steals upon it unper- 

 ceived, as the Indian steals upon the white man in his encamp- 

 ment, observes its motions and attitudes, studies its peculiarities, 

 and then shoots it. He restores it to its favourite or charac- 

 teristic attitude, by a method which, some years ago, he exhi- 

 bited to the Wemerian Natural History Society of Edinburgh, 

 and while it yet retains unimpaired the rapidly evanescent hues 

 of its eyes, bill, and feet, he transfers its semblance to his paper. 

 The bill, the claws, the scales of the tarsi and toes, the feathers^ 



