INTRODUCTION 5 
ence which probably no other large, illustrated, scien- 
tific or semi-scientific works have enjoyed to a like de- 
gree. 
As has been said of Prince Henry the Navigator, 
though in different words, John James Audubon was 
one of those who by a simple-hearted life of talent, de- 
votion and enthusiasm have freed themselves from the 
law of death. Audubon was a man of many sides, and 
his fame is due to a rare combination of those talents 
and powers which were needed to accomplish the work 
that he finally set out to do. His personality was most 
winning, his individuality strong, and his long life, bent 
for the most part to attain definite ends, was checkered, 
adventurous and romantic beyond the common lot of 
men. 
Few men outside of public life have been praised 
more lavishly than Audubon during his active career. 
Though he had but few open enemies, those few, as if 
conscious of the fact, seemed to assail him the more 
harshly and persistently. In reading all that has been 
said about this strenuous worker both before and since 
his death, one is continually struck by the perverse or 
contrary opinions that are often expressed. He was 
not this and he was not that, but he was simply Audu- 
bon, and there has been no one else who has at all closely 
resembled him or with whom he can be profitably com- 
pared. One charges that he did not write the books 
which bear his name. Another complains that he was 
no philosopher, and was not a man of science at heart; 
that he was vain, elegant, inclined to be selfish, inconse- 
quential, and that he reverenced the great; that he shot 
birds for sport; that he was a plagiarist; that he was 
the king of nature fakirs and a charlatan; that he never 
propounded or answered a scientific question; and, 
