THE AUDUBON HOUSE
As it appears to-day, below Riverside Drive, near 155th Street,
New York
John J. Audubon
While Wilson was at work, chance brought John J. Audubon, a lively young fellow of eighteen, to reside in a village near Philadelphia. Audubon, the son of a French father and a French Creole mother of San Domingo, was born at Aux Cayes (owe kei), in that island, April 26, 1785. Well educated in France, and in easy financial circumstances, he was fond of gunning and of painting portraits of the game he shot. Though Audubon and Wilson met, the temperaments of the two were antagonistic, and no acquaintance followed. It was not until several years later that Audubon's own ambitious "Birds of America" began to see the light after a long period of wandering and misfortune, in which nothing but the faithful support of his talented wife saved the author from failure.
Audubon's monumental work, now brings, in the original edition with the folio-plates, $3,000 to $4,000 in the book market. It contains far more material and better plates than Wilson's work, and differs from it strikingly in a literary way, for Audubon's style is characteristically French in its liveliness, its interjection of personal incidents, and its imaginative exaggeration. Audubon's fame as an author is based on the magnificent plates rather than on the text of his book, which is rarely quoted by modern ornithologists, most of whose writings are, however, far less entertaining. Audubon, possessing pleasing social gifts and special opportunities, obtained a contemporary publicity such as Wilson never enjoyed.
Photograph by courtesy of the American Museum of Natural
History, New York
LOUIS AGASSIZ
Demonstrating his favorite subject, Radiates
(corals, jelly fishes, and star-fish
tribe), before a class of pupils
A Group of Early Naturalists
A third important treatise on our birds was that by Thomas Nuttall, a quaint character in charge of the Harvard Botanical Garden, and an original author in botany. Like his predecessors he gathered his facts by traveling extensively. His two volumes are of great value, and peculiarly interesting in the matter of birds' songs.
