31 



island. Kroin his earliest years Audubon showed a love for nature. 

 His interest and his affection, for both were involved, turned par- 

 ticularly to birds. During his boyhood days in France as he has 

 said himself "Instead of going to school when I ought to have 

 gone I usually made for the fields." On these truant excursions 

 he studied such birds, flowers, trees, pebbles and shells as a some- 

 what limited field of observation gave him opportunity. 



Audubon's stepmother loved him devotedly and she did her 

 best in a kindly mistaken way to spoil him, but he was of too 

 fine a fiber to be spoiled by stepmother indulgence. His father 

 knew the value of learning and while he had sense enough to be 

 pleased with all that his boy had accomplished in the way of laying 

 up a store of knowledge of the beasts of the field and the fowls of 

 the air, he knew that in order to make these things tell in the 

 world that other knowledge must bear them company. Audubon 

 in later years was given an occasion to belittle his own education, 

 but he had a greater store of learning than he was given to putting 

 down to his credit. It is perhaps a clue to the nature of the 

 man to say that as a pupil at school he loved geography and loathed 

 mathematics. 



Audubon's Home in Pennsylvania. 



Audubon lived in France until he was approaching manhood. 

 Then his father found it necessary to send him back to the United 

 States of America which Audubon calls "my own beloved country," 

 and he adds "I came with intense and indiscribable pleasure." It 

 is necessary to pass over some of the experiences of the first few 

 months in America. Years before. Admiral Audubon during a 

 visit he had paid to Pennsylvania, had purchased the farm of Mill 

 Grove where the Perkiomen Creek empties into the Schuylkill 

 River. 



In one of Audubon's manuscripts preserved in printed form in 

 the fine life of the naturalist "Audubon and His Journals," by 

 Maria R. Audubon, his granddaughter, we read : "At this place 

 (Mill Grove) and. a few days only before the memorable battle 

 of Valley Forge, General Washington presented him (Audubon's 

 father) with is portrait, now in my possession ; and highly do I 

 value it as a memento of that noble man and the glories of those 

 days." 



Miss Audubon who edited the Journals of her grandfather puts 

 the Latin word "sic" in parenthesis after the naturalist's allusion 

 to the "memorable battle" of Vallev Forge. Audubon was a little 



