John James Audubon 



By Edward Clark 



The simple truth is spoken wlicn it is said that the Audubon societies, formed 

 for the protection of wilfl bird life in America, are carryin^^ forward their work 

 not only in the name of Audubon but in the spirit which was the great naturalist's 

 guide. John James Audubon was a lover of nature. He made his way deep 

 into Mother Nature's heart and there held his place throuRh the long years of 

 his life. Too little is known to most peo[)le of this man, who, Frenchman by 

 extraction, was wholly .\merican in love and loyalty. 



Some men have said that .'Xudubon was an impractical man, a dreamer. 

 Impractical he was and a dreamer, too, but the world is better for its dreamer>. 

 The business man of large affairs looks with a sort of pitying arrogance upon the 

 man who loves the woods rather than the counting house. The man who goe« to 

 the woods with a purpose in his heart has chosen the better i)art. The impractical 

 Audubon will live when those who called him dreamer have been for centuries 

 forgotten. 



John James .\udubon was born in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana, about 

 twenty miles from New Orleans, some time between the years 1772 and 1783, the 

 exact date being unknown. He was the son of .Admiral Jean .Audubon, an officer 

 of the French navy, who served under Rochambeau in the fleet which aided 

 America in establishing her independence. .Admiral Audubon, with his wife, were 

 visiting in Louisiana at the time of the birth of the boy who was destined to 

 become the best-known of all American naturalists. The boy Audubon's mother 

 was killed in 1793 in Santo Domingo, where her husband held a large landed 

 property. Madam .Audubon lost her life during one of the negro insurrections 

 in that island. Admiral .Audubon took his children to France, where he remarried 

 and gave to his youngest son, John James, the only mother he ever knew. 



It is impossible in a brief sketch to tell the hundredth part of what there is 

 to be told of .\udul)on's life. It was filled with interest from the hour of his 

 birth on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain to the hour of his death in jAudubon 

 Park on Manhattan Island. From his earliest years Audubon showed a love for 

 nature. His interest and his affection, for both were involved, turned particularly 

 to birds. During his boyhood days in France, as he has said himself, "instead of 

 going to school when I ought to have gone, I usually made for the fields." On 

 these truant excursions he studied such birds, flowers, trees, pebbles and shells 

 as a somewliat limited field of observation gave him opportunity. 



Audubon's stepmother loved him devotedly, and she did her best in a kindly, 

 mistaken way to spoil him. but he was of too fine a fiber to. be spoiled by step- 

 mother indulgence. His father knew the value of learning, and while he had 

 sense enough to be pleased with all that his boy had accomplished in the way of 

 laying up a store of knowledge of the beasts of the field and the fowls of the 

 air. he knew that in order to make these things tell in the world that other knowl- 



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