284 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 



From early boyhood he was an ardent enthusiast in the 

 study of nature, at a time when such studies were gen- 

 erally frowned upon in country districts as not only 

 idle but positively harmful. He trapped the beaver, 

 and from the sale of its skins was able to make his first 

 purchase of books on natural history. While a young 

 man he became acquainted with Alexander Wilson and 

 learned to know him well, having joined him in field 

 excursions and collected birds for him in northern New 

 York; on Wilson's recommendation he succeeded both 

 him and his nephew, William Duncan, in the Elwood 

 School, at Milestown, Pennsylvania, where he taught 

 for a year. While there, a youth of barely fifteen, he 

 was invited, no doubt through the influence of Wilson, 

 to meet Alexander von Humboldt at a dinner given in 

 honor of the great traveler at Philadelphia in 1804. 

 From a pastorate in Shagticoke, New York, Bachman in 

 1815 went to Charleston, South Carolina, where he pre- 

 sided over the Lutheran church for nearly sixty years, 

 and became thoroughly identified with the South. Be- 

 loved as few men ever are in their community, he was 

 widely honored for his attainments in natural science. 

 In an address on Humboldt, dictated by Bachman 

 when in his eightieth year, and too feeble to deliver it 

 himself, he alluded to the event noticed above to show 

 "how scanty, in those days, was the material in natural 

 science." Among the few naturalists who were present 

 on the occasion of the dinner, which was held in Peale's 

 Museum, were, he said: ^* 



the two Bartrams, Wilson, the ornithologist, Lawson, his en- 

 graver, George Ord and a few others. . . . Few speeches were 



^■' See C. L. Bachman, op. cit., p. 391. John Bachman died at Charleston, 



February 24, 1874. 



