BIRD, BEAST AND HUNTER. 33 



not a living creature on the green earth and under the sun, 

 and therefore it has been that only such heathful and hardy 

 treatment as our natui'alists have given to Natural History, 

 has found favor among us. Our glorious Audubon, who is 

 just now dead, lived and wrote like one of the people, and 

 therefore we love and venerate him passed away. The people 

 everywhere will have the familiar objects and subjects of 

 their every-day life treated in a familiar way, and all the 

 stilted terminology of an over-done wisdom is, and must con- 

 tinue to be, gibberish to tb em. One such fanciful and eloquent 

 romancer as Buffon, will continue through all time more dear to 

 the popular heart in the Old World, than fifty rude stolid com- 

 pilers as Gesner or Pennant, or even than the venerated 

 Linnjeus himself; and Goldsmith, too, has made "A Fairy 

 Tale" (as Sam Johnson called it,) of Natural History, that 

 must live as a substantial reality in the memories of mankind 

 more enduring than the heavy monuments of learning. 



It is therefore entirely from the stand-point of the Hunter 

 Naturalist, — the indigenous growth of our New World, — that I 

 propose to regard the Romance of Sporting, and the relations 

 of Bird, Beast and Hunter. 



