BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
OF 
JOHN JAMES AUDUBON. 
ProBaBty there never has been a great naturalist who did not love 
his particular pursuit, for its own sake, with a passionate enthusiasm, 
without regard to profit or fame. Audubon is an illustrious example 
of this. Indeed, nothing short of an absorbing devotion to ornitholo- 
gy could have supported him amid the difficulties and toils which he 
has had to encounter in his career. In an autobiographical memoir 
prefixed to the descriptive letter-press of his celebrated work, The 
Birds of America, he declares that in his childhood he made the pro- 
ductions of nature around him his very playmates, and that he soon 
formed such an intercourse with them as savoured more of frenzy 
than of mere friendship. This is language that might seem to con- 
tain fully as much of exaggeration as of truth, were it not that the 
whole of his after career bears ample testimony to its accuracy. The 
power of his early impressions has never slackened. He has for 
years continued to expose himself to all weather and climates. in fur- 
therance of his pursuit ; and when he has at any timé gained an object 
which he thinks worthy of being described and exhibited, he sits 
down to study and to draw it, with an intenseness of application, 
which is even more exhausting than his active exertions. Like his 
forerunner, Wilson, he has explored the fcrests, mountains, and shores 
of America, snatching the fearful joy of wandering beyond the limits 
of civilization, with no other companions than dog and gun; his fires 
have lighted up woods, and shone in waters, which never before felt 
the presence of cultivated man—where the Rose-breast sung him to 
repose at night, and the Wood-thrush waked him with its native 
strains. But the few particulars which we are about to state of his 
history—these being chiefly gathered from his own account of him- 
self—will afford a more striking idea of his inextinguishable and un- 
ceasing devotion to the study of the feathered creation. 
Audubon declares, that during his early years, none but aérial com- 
panions suited his fancy; and that when removed from the woods, 
the prairies,and the brooks, ‘or shut up from the view of the wide 
Atlantic, he experienced none of those pleasures most congenial to 
his mind. No roof seemed so secure to him as that formed of the 
dense foliage under which the feathered tribes were seen to resort, 
or the caves and fissures of the many rocks to which the dark-winged 
cormorant and the curlew retired to rest, or to protect themselves from 
the fury of the tempest. His father, it appears, possessed a kindred fan- 
cy, and was to the boya valuable preceptor. He often accompanied the 
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