INTRODUCTION 5 



ence which probably no other large, illustrated, scien- 

 tific or semi-scientific works have enjoyed to a like de- 

 gree. 



As has been said of Prince Henry the Navigator, 

 though in different words, John James Audubon was 

 one of those who by a simple-hearted life of talent, de- 

 votion and enthusiasm have freed themselves from the 

 law of death. Audubon was a man of many sides, and 

 his fame is due to a rare combination of those talents 

 and powers which were needed to accomplish the work 

 that he finally set out to do. His personality was most 

 winning, his individuality strong, and his long life, bent 

 for the most part to attain definite ends, was checkered, 

 adventurous and romantic beyond the common lot of 

 men. 



Few men outside of public life have been praised 

 more lavishly than Audubon during his active career. 

 Though he had but few open enemies, those few, as if 

 conscious of the fact, seemed to assail him the more 

 harshly and persistently. In reading all that has been 

 said about this strenuous worker both before and since 

 his death, one is continually struck by the perverse or 

 contrary opinions that are often expressed. He was 

 not this and he was not that, but he was simply Audu- 

 bon, and there has been no one else who has at all closely 

 resembled him or with whom he can be profitably com- 

 pared. One charges that he did not write the books 

 which bear his name. Another complains that he was 

 no philosopher, and was not a man of science at heart; 

 that he was vain, elegant, inclined to be selfish, inconse- 

 quential, and that he reverenced the great; that he shot 

 birds for sport; that he was a plagiarist; that he was 

 the king of nature fakirs and a charlatan; that he never 

 propounded or answered a scientific question; and, 



