Vol. XX 



1903 



I KnOAvm, Aii(h<bo/iia/ia. ^77 



AUDUBONIANA. 



BY S. N. RHOADS. 



The three Audubon letters herewith presented recently came 

 into my possession and were found to contain so much of an 

 apparently unpublished character of interest to ornithologists that 

 it was thought best to have them printed. 



All were written to Edward Harris of Moorestown, one of the 

 most faithful and helpful friends of Audubon during his life, and 

 the one man, not related to the Audubon family, who most sub- 

 stantially aided the widow of J. J. Audubon in the financial diffi- 

 culties which she underwent just prior to Edward Harris's death 

 in 1863. 



The light thrown upon Audubon's relations with, and attitude 

 toward, contemporary American and English ornithologists, espe- 

 cially Townsend, Nuttall, and Bonaparte, is of no small value and 

 significance. So little indeed do we know about Townsend, out- 

 side his charming and classic ' Narrative,' that these historic ref- 

 erences to him by such a man as Audubon are a precious legacy 

 and but confirm the impression that with Townsend there prema- 

 turely perished one of the humblest, gentlest, and therefore truly 

 greatest, of Nature's noblemen. 



Perhaps at no period in Audubon's life was the pressure greater, 

 from the literary and scientific side, than when these letters were 

 written to Harris. The insatiable claims of priority had taken fast 

 hold upon a spirit naturally averse to technique and artificiality, 

 and in his journal of even date we see how he occasionally revolted 

 against this form of slavery and sighed for the woods and fields. 



Within the mere closet naturalist these heart to heart talks of 

 the Great Bird Lover with his scholarly friend may stir no emotions 

 deeper than curiosity, but there are others who can keenly sympa- 

 thize with Audubon's struggles in a foreign land to forestall his 

 friendly rivals on both sides of the Atlantic, and can forgive the 

 importunity, suspicion, vanity and supersensitiveness which tor- 

 mented his artistic, freedom-loving soul in the greatest crisis of his 

 life. 



