

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 



No less than ten volumes about, or by, Audubon have ap- 

 peared during the past twenty years, or since the publication 

 of Audubon the Naturalist in 1917, and three of these are more 

 or less extended biographies. Certainly this is remarkable 

 evidence of the curiosity that his adventurous and romantic 

 life has aroused in the reading public, as well as of the engaging 

 beauty of his delineations of animal and plant life. 



Recent years (1929-1930) have seen the publication of the 

 journal of Audubon's famous journey down the Ohio and 

 Mississippi Rivers in 1820-1821, and also of his journal of 

 1840-1843, made while obtaining subscriptions to his Birds of 

 America in America, as well as two volumes of letters, written 

 in 1826-1840, the most fruitful period of his life's labors. 



As a climax to this, all of Audubon's great and lesser bird 

 plates, some five hundred in number, a century after their 

 original publication in England and America, have now been 

 reproduced in full color, though in reduced form, with a brief 

 text, while the value of the original 435 hand-colored copper- 

 plate engravings of the double elephant folio edition of 1826- 

 1838 has risen to fifteen times their original cost of one thou- 

 sand dollars in America. 



Audubon's "Book of Nature," as he often called his Birds of 

 America, should be judged not alone by its fidelity or scientific 

 accuracy, but also by the force of its example in sending direct 

 to Nature, the fountainhead, all who would depict life and 

 action. As an inspirer of youth, who can estimate the extent 

 of its influence? 



The late Louis Agassiz Fuertes, who was certainly one of 



the greatest delineators of bird life that has ever lived, wrote 



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