The Life and Services of John James Audubon. 



BY DANIEL (J. ELLIOT, F. R. 8. E. 



Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen — Should we desire to 

 seek for the beginnings of Oniitholog}-, we must look for them 

 in the period when our old earth was yet }■ oung ; when that 

 strange creature, more bird than reptile, more reptile than bird, 

 according to the impressions received by those who have studied 

 its remains in the slab of Solenhofcn, the Archaeopteryx, winged 

 its feeble flight above the landscape of the Jurrassic Age. 

 Evolved from its wholly reptilian ancestors, this, so far as we 

 know, was the first creature provided Avith wings composed of 

 feathers to bear it onward and upward in the atmosphere. 



There were no artists upon the earth in those days to trans- 

 mit to us the portraits of animals then living, but nature has 

 carefully wrapped this creature in the stone to remain foreA'er 

 an object of our wonder and our admiration. 



Unknown ages rolled along, and man appeared upon the 

 scene, but in the evidences of their existence that the pre-historic 

 races have left behind them, no incised stone, or bone, or 

 ivory, contains any rei)resentation of birds. 



It is only when we reach what may be deemed modern times, 

 in comparison to the i)eriods of which I have referred, that we 

 meet with colored pictures of birds, and although it is now more 

 than three thousand years since the artist painted their por- 



