198* MEMOIR OF JOHN JAMES AUDUBON. 
young naturalist, procured birds, and pointed out the beauty and soft- 
ness of their plumage, the manifestations of their pleasure or sense of 
danger, and their always perfect forms as well as splendid attire. And 
then their habits, their haunts, their change of livery, and everything 
connected with their history, were appropriately made themes for 
fixing the student’s mind upon the Great Creator. Indeed our orni- 
tholugist, on proper occasions, never fails to express happily a be- 
coming religious feeling. 
Audubon continues to say, that a vivid pleasure shone upon the 
days of his early youth, attended with a calmness of feeling, that seldom 
failed to rivet his attention for hours, whilst he gazed upon the pearly 
and shining eggs, as they lay imbedded in the softest down, or among 
dried leaves and twigs, or were exposed upon the burning sand or 
weather-beaten rocks of the Atlantic shores. He looked upon them 
as flowers yet in the bud. He watched their opening, to see how 
Nature had previded each different species with eyes, either open at 
birth, or closed ; to trace the slew progress of the young toward per- 
fection, or admire the celerity with which some them, while yet un- 
fledged, removed themselves from danger to security. In all this 
minute detail, and love todwell upon the particulars of the history of 
the feathered creation, we see the enthusiast and the origin of great 
contributions to science ; for there could be nothing more natural than 
that his passion should increase with his age. 
For a number of years, however, our young ornithologist was far 
from being gratified with his acquisitions; nor is it probable that such 
an ardent enthusiast and expanding capacity for contemplating na- 
ture, will ever be satisfied, since the wider and higher the domain of 
nature is traversed, its beauties and wonders, according to a rapid 
ratio, increase. We like him, when speaking of these early years, and 
confessing, that the moment a bird was killed for the sake of forward- 
ing his researches, however beautiful it had been in life, the pleasure 
arising from the possession of it became blunted, for he felt that its 
vesture was sullied, and that it no longer was fresh from the hands of 
its Maker. He wished to obtain all the productions of Nature, but 
he wished life with them. ‘To the present day, we find him speaking 
of the necessity of resorting to deadly means to secure the objects of 
his study, as costing him pain; and this tender feeling is even more 
apparent from the affecting manner in which he describes the speci- 
men than from any direct attestation. For example, in one of his late 
volumes,when describing the means he adopted to take the life of a noble 
Golden Eagle, viz. with the fumes of charcoal, to avoid injuring his 
plumage, and to spare it unnecessary pain, he adds, that he entered 
the little apartment in which the experiment had been made, and found 
the eagle, after having been expused to its effects for hours, “ with 
his bright, unflinching eye turned towards him as lively and vigorous 
as ever;” evidently by the manner of description showing how it went 
to his heart to have been obliged thus to treat his precious victim. 
But the very circumstance of his pleasure being blunted when con- 
templating a dead creature, and its plumage appearing thereafter 
sullied and abused, was the océasion of his becoming, as a delineator 
of birds, the most successful and finished that ever existed. Cuvier 
said, that it was not only as a philosopher, but as an artist, that Audu- 
