ie eeataeas Oe De Ur BLO UN By Ue Lele bell oN 13 
Book Reviews 
Louis AGASSIZ FUERTES, by Mary Fuertes Boynton. Oxford University 
Press, New York City, 1956. 317 pages. Clothbound, $7.50. 
From correspondence overflowing three filing case drawers, 26 inches 
deep, the daughter of one of America’s greatest bird artists and naturalists 
has sketched a lively portrait. Born in Ithaca, New York in 1874, Louis 
Agassiz Fuertes was the son of a Cornell University professor. His mother 
was of Dutch and Yankee descent, an accomplished pianist and teacher. 
For over ten boyhood years, Fuertes’s daily inspiration was to look at 
the elephant folio sets of Audubon’s Birds of America placed by some 
good fortune in the town library. In a letter to Frank Chapman in 1917, 
Fuertes wrote, “This set was ... my daily bread; by it I was thrilled 
so that it melts me now to remember it.” 
Educated in the schools of Ithaca and Switzerland, Fuertes later gradu- 
ated from Cornell University. A series of fortunate expeditions widened 
his experience with the birds of North America. Upon leaving college, he 
toured Florida with the artist, Abbott Thayer. In 1899 Fuertes went to 
Alaska with the famous Harriman task force, later making visits to Texas, 
Canada, the Bahamas, Colombia and Ethiopia. From 1923 to 1927, he was 
a lecturer in ornithology at Cornell University. He contributed to scores 
of magazines and books, leaving a collection of 3,500 bird skins and having 
prepared over a thousand field and studio sketches of over 400 birds. 
Readers may be familiar with his work through the bird cards available 
with Arm and Hammer Baking Soda packages. 
It was said of Fuertes that he was blessed with several good gifts at 
birth: he had a most discerning eye, able to identify an eagle when it was 
just a speck in the sky to others; he had a most sensitive ear and was able 
to mimic by voice or whistle what he had just heard. The leading bird 
painter of his time, Fuertes was an inspiring teacher. His success with 
children was pure genius — he was deeply interested in all sorts of things 
they liked, and he met them on common ground. Louis Agassiz Fuertes 
died in an unfortunate accident in upstate New York when his roadster 
was hit by an express train. 
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It was but a few months ago that several etchings of a Bob White done 
by Fuertes were discovered in the office of the Illinois Audubon Society. 
How they found their way to our office has been lost in history. Since they 
were dedicated by Fuertes to our Society, some of these sketches have 
been sent to distinguished friends of bird life in Illinois. The portraits are 
suitable for framing. Fuertes’s work lives on in our own state! 
Raymond Mostek, 3345 N. Harding Ave., Chicago 18, Illinois 
