and Onutfiological Biogra/pkij. 3!!^ 



cent rivers, and paddled his solitary canoe over the floods that 

 have spread consternation and terror among the inhabitants of 

 the alluvial plains of her midland regions. This, then, is the 

 man, and not he who, seated in comfort by his table, fancies 

 how things should be, from whom might be expected the com- 

 pletion of the descriptions of others who have pursued the same 

 method. " It is greatly to be wished," says Charles Lucien 

 Bonaparte, speaking of our author, in his Continuation of 

 Wilson's Ornithology, the production of a learned, most accu- 

 rate, and enthusiastic naturalist, " that whilst his work is pre- 

 paring, a scientific abstract of his discoveries should be drawn 

 up without delay."" Here, then, is not indeed " a scientific ab- 

 stract,*" but a detailed account of Mr Audubon's discoveries and 

 observations. 



As, in painting, our author has a style of his own, so also in 

 writing. His biographies do not consist of the observations of 

 others, eked out and distorted, so as to seem original. He pro- 

 fesses to write only of what he has seen. Nor are they always 

 conducted with that strict regard to method which characterizes 

 the writings of the naturalists of the Linnaean school. Thus, 

 in his description of the Wood Thrush {Turdus mustel'mus)^ 

 he commences neither with bill nor claw, but with the follow- 

 ing beautiful apostrophe. 



" Kind reader, you now see before you my greatest favour- 

 ite of the feathered tribes. To it I owe much. How often has 

 it revived my drooping spirits, when I have listened to its wild 

 notes in the forest, after passing a restless night in my slender 

 shed, so feebly secured against the violence of the storm, as to 

 shew me the futility of my best efforts to rekindle ray little fire, 

 whose uncertain and vacillating light had gradually died away 

 under the destructive weight of the dense torrents of rain that 

 seemed to involve the heavens and the earth in one mass of 

 fearful murkiness, save when the red streaks of the flashing . 

 thunderbolt burst on the dazzled eye, and, glancing along the 

 huge trunk of the stateliest and noblest tree in my immediate 

 neighbourhood, were instantly followed by an uproar of crack- 

 ling, crashing, and deafening sounds, rolling their volumes in 

 tumultuous eddies far and near, as if to silence the very breath-. 



XANUArvr MARCH 1881 . Y M an fifWpm^ 



