AUDUBON AND BOONE. 125 



zard, cocca, traclise, and bronchi. On the ignited clay cast- 

 ings of a buffalo you have laid the body, and it is now almost 

 ready to satisfy the longing of your stomach, as it hisses in 

 its oderous sap. The brook at your feet affords the very best 

 drink that nature can supply, and I need not wish you better 

 fare than that before you. 



Next morning you find yourself refreshed and reinvigor- 

 ated, more ardent than ever, for success fails not to excite the 

 desire of those who have entered upon the study of nature. 

 You have packed your bird's skin flat in your box, rolled up 

 your drawing round those previously made, and now, day 

 after day, you push through thick and thin, sometimes with 

 success, and sometimes without ; but you at last return with 

 such a load on your shoulders as I have often carried on 

 mine. Having once more reached the settlements, you relieve 

 your tired limbs by mounting a horse, and at length gaining 

 a city, find means of publishing the results of your journey. 



It requires very little exertion of fancy to see in this a 

 felicitous sketch of his own mode of " ransacking the woods, 

 the shores, and the barren grounds." 



It is just such hardy methods wherein consist the immea- 

 surable superiority of Mr. Audubon over the whole school of 

 stuffed-specimen delineators, whose indigestible crudities and 

 wretched figures have proven the very night-mare of Natural 

 Science in the Old World. 



The idea of mounting knapsack and gun, and trudging 

 thousands of miles through brake and morass, over "sands, 

 shores, and desert wildernesses," encountering and braving 

 the "imminence" of many perils, exposed to all "the spite 

 of wreakful elements," purely for love of nature, and scientific 

 accuracy, would have set one of these philosophical amateurs 

 to shuddering. To bespatter black coat and silken hose, get 

 half starved, and catch a death cold in " collecting materials," 

 "were simply preposterous — when the Zoological gardens are 

 close at hand, and the museums are filled with specimens. 



