AUDUBON 



THE 



NATURALIST 



CHAPTER I 



INTRODUCTION 



Audubon's growing fame — Experience in Paris in 1828 — Cuvier's patron- 

 age — Audubon's publications — His critics — His talents and accom- 

 plishments — His Americanism and honesty of purpose — His foibles 

 and faults — Appreciations and monuments — The Audubon Societies — 

 Biographies and autobiography — Robert Buchanan and the true his- 

 tory of his Life of Audubon. 



It is more than three-quarters of a century since 

 Audubon's masterpiece, The Birds of America, was 

 completed, and two generations have occupied the stage 

 since the "American Woodsman" quietly passed away 

 at his home on the Hudson River. These generations 

 have seen greater changes in the development and ap- 

 plication of natural science and in the spread of sci- 

 entific knowledge among men than all those which pre- 

 ceded them. Theories of nature come and go but the 

 truth abides, and Audubon's "book of Nature," repre- 

 sented by his four massive volumes of hand-engraved 

 and hand-colored plates, still remains "the most mag- 

 nificent monument which has yet been raised to ornithol- 

 ogy," as Cuvier said of the parts which met his aston- 

 ished gaze in 1828; while his graphic sketches of Ameri- 

 can life and scenery and his vivid portraits of birds, 



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