22 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 



haps the best key to the sad history of this able writer 

 was given by himself when he said: "It is my vice that 

 I must love a thing wholly, or dislike it wholly." His 

 wife, we are told, was much like himself, and "like a 

 couple of babies they muddled through life, tasting of 

 some of its joys, but oftener of its sorrows." Undoubt- 

 edly Robert Buchanan was a genuine lover of truth and 

 beauty; he has written numerous sketches of birds and 

 outdoor scenes, but with no suggestion of nature as 

 serving any other purpose than that of supplying a poet 

 with bright and pleasing images. 



It was with the purpose of correcting the false im- 

 pressions created by animadversions in Buchanan's Life 

 that Mrs. Audubon, with the aid of her friend, James 

 Grant Wilson, revised this work and published it in 

 America under her name as editor, in 1869. The 

 changes then made in Buchanan's text, however, were 

 of a minor character and most of its errors remained 

 uncorrected. The naturalist's granddaughter, Miss 

 Maria R. Audubon, was inspired in part by similar feel- 

 ings in preparing, with the aid of Dr. Elliott Coues, her 

 larger and excellent work in two volumes, entitled 

 Audubon, and His Journals, which appeared in 1898. 

 To her all admirers of Audubon owe a debt of gratitude 

 for giving to the world for the first time a large part 

 of his extant journals, as well as many new facts bear- 

 ing upon his life and character. Other briefer biogra- 

 phies of Audubon which have appeared have been taken 

 so completely from the preceding works, and have re- 

 peated and extended their errors to such an extent, as to 

 call for little or no comment either here or in the pages 

 which follow. 



Through the discovery in France of new document- 

 ary evidence in surprising abundance we are obliged to 



