1893. | NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 5d 
ist advanced with his subject,—from the first debased creature, 
seemingly unworthy of the name of Man, with eager eyes watch- 
ing the animals about him, actuated solely with the desire for 
food, until, having kept step and time with the march of the 
progressive ages, at length materially and mentally equipped, he 
is able with the eye of faith and finger of instinct to perceive 
and point out the ways and methods of Creative Power. For 
the entire universe is ever moving onward and upward; there is 
no cessation in the march of development; advance! ‘ Go 
forward!” is and has ever been the divine command. To hesi- 
tate, to pause, means death, and there can be no retrogression. 
Type breeding only unto type ends surely in annihilation. To 
stand still is to cease to exist, to go ever forward from one 
height to another still higher is the only method for a continued 
life. Such is the manifest law of Omnipotence, and only. that 
which is capable of a higher development can survive. 
Man—that highest of earthly types—is no exception to this 
law, but in himself exemplifies its truth and force in the evi- 
dences of his.own existence. The races incapable of farther 
advancement become extinct, only those survive which contain 
within themselves the seeds of continued progress, and which, 
on looking on their history, can say, 
‘T have climbed the snows of Age, and I gazed at a field in the Past, 
Where I sank with the body at times, in the sloughs of a low desire, 
But I hear no yelp of the beast, and the Man is quiet at last, 
As he stands on the height of his life, with a glimpse of a height that 
is higher.”’ 
We may not, therefore, as I have already said, judge Audu- 
bon by the standard of to-day, any more than we ourselves shall 
be measured by that employed by naturalists half a century 
hence. He was an ornithological artist, not a scientific natur- 
alist, and no one appreciated this fact, and was more ready to 
acknowledge it than the simple, frank and enthusiastic author of 
the Birds of America. He never made pretence to. be more than 
he really was ; he never claimed to anything higher than to be a 
lover of animals, their faithful illustrator, and the historian of 
their lives, but in this role he occupies a formost place, and has 
gained an imperishable name. .We must consider him as he 
struggled and worked in the dawn of the scientific period, in the 
blaze of whose noonday sun we ourselves live. 
He is most remarkable for his energy and indomitable perse- 
verance in battling against the difficulties presented in the ex- 
ploration of a little known, wild and for the most part un- 
civilized land, permitting few opportunities, even if he had the 
