a)uJ Ornilhoiogical Biogj'aphy. 133 



in the fure-ground. However this may be, Audubon can afford 

 a bad figure, especially when it has been made, twenty years ago, 

 from a bird whicli he has not since had an opportunity of seeing. 

 The next plate of sparrow-hawks affords a perfect contrast; for 

 there the most easy and graceful attitudes are exhibited. 



The night-hawk, silently gliding among the oak leaves ; the 

 sharp-tailed finches, creeping along the stalks of the marsh-plants; 

 the turkey buzzards, which we can almost imagine to smell of 

 carrion ; the pleasant nuthatches, ever busy, and therefore never 

 dull ; the suspicious crow, watching, from the top of a walnut- 

 tree, the young rustic, who is advancing with an old musket 

 charged with home-made powder and slugs large enough to kill 

 a mammoth; the Caracara kites, making fierce love; and the love- 

 ly Zenaida doves, jjerched among the white and purple blos- 

 soms of the anona, — are objects on which we could look long 

 without any abatement of admiration. The delicately-pencilled 

 tawny thrush ; the glowing Keywest dove ; the loving barn- 

 swallows, which, assuredly, none but Audubon could have so re- 

 presented ; the tiny wood-wren ; the huge golden eagle, soaring 

 aloft with a white hare, with which she intends to feast her 

 young, anxiously expecting her in some chasm among the cliffs 

 of the Hudson ; and the little ground-doves, not larger than 

 thrushes, are not less beautifully than faithfully pictured. We 

 may expect a tough battle-from the two prairie cocks ; the boat- 

 tailed grakles are meditating a descent on some swampy rice- 

 field; the willow-groas spies a prowling Indian in the distance; 

 tlie butcher-bird is burking an unlucky finch for dissection ; the 

 jerfalcons are talking of mangled puffins; the little Acadian owl 

 is screaming over a poor mouse ; and, lastly, the little horned- 

 lark is quietly dosing close to his young, among a tuft of green 

 moss, not far from American Harbour in Labrador. 



All is life, and health, and beauty. Never before were birds 

 so represented, and if ever again they shall be, still Audubon 

 will be the chief of a school, of which it will be said, that it 

 studied nature. Turn now t-o any volume of plates that you 

 can find, and what presents itself.^ — not a bird surely, but an 

 effigy stuffed with straw, and more worthy of being burnt than 

 that of a lory statesman by a radical mob. But comparisons 

 and contrasts arc quite unnecessary now, and no ingenuous per- 



