44 TRANSACTIONS OF THE [Nov. 5, 
traits, yet the fresco of six geese, taken from a tomb at May- 
doom, in Egypt, and now deposited in the museum at Boolak, is 
so fresh, and depicted with such marvelous fidelity of form and 
coloring, that four of these figures, can without hesitation be 
referred to two species living in the Old World to-day, one of 
which, the white fronted goose, has a very near relative in our 
own land, and known to. many as the Brant of our Western 
prairies. There were probably most excellent and learned 
naturalists among that wonderful people living on the banks of 
the old Nile, but their names have been lost in the overthrow of 
their nation, and it was not until the fourth century before 
Christ that the first serious ornithological author appeared in 
the person of Aristotle. He was followed in the first century 
of our era by Pliny the Elder,and then we come to the sixteenth 
century before we find a name at all familiar to us. The seven- 
teenth and eighteenth centuries produced a host of naturalists, 
some preéminent in ornithology ; and it was towards the close 
of this century that he appeared upon the scene, in honor of 
whose memory we are assembled here this evening. 
In the resurrection period, the most beautiful season of the 
year, when all the groves were echoing with melody issuing 
from countless feathered throats, singing a natal song to him 
who was to be ever the birds’ lover and friend, and the air was 
redolent with the fragrant breath of opening buds and flowers, 
on the 4th May, 1780, in the then French province, now the 
State of Louisiana, on his father’s plantation, John James Au- 
dubon was born. His mother’s maiden name was Anne Moy- 
nette. She was a lady of Spanish extraction, possessed both of 
wealth and beauty. A few years after the birth of her youngest 
son Mrs. Audubon accompanied her husband to St. Domingo, 
and there perished during an insurrection of the negroes. The 
elder Audubon then returned to France with his family, and 
the future naturalist was sent to school, and was instructed in 
mathematics, geography, drawing, music and fencing, and in 
the last three he became proficient. He played well upon the 
violin, flageolet and guitar, and was a graceful dancer, an ac- 
complishment that in after years he was to have more oppor- 
tunities of practicing with bears and other wild denizens of the 
forest than with the fairer sex of his own species. During his 
school days, at every opportunity that offered, young Audubon 
would wander away to the woods and fields to collect objects of 
natural history, and he also made about two hundred drawings 
of the birds he procured. Declining to join the armies of Na- 
poleon, his father sent him to America to look after some 
property called Mill Grove, which he had purchased on Perkio- 
men Creek, near Philadelphia. 
