Transcriber’s Note:
Title page added.
BIRDS
A MONTHLY SERIAL
ILLUSTRATED BY COLOR PHOTOGRAPHY
DESIGNED TO PROMOTE
KNOWLEDGE OF BIRD-LIFE
VOLUME II.
CHICAGO.
NATURE STUDY PUBLISHING COMPANY.
copyright, 1897
by
Nature Study Publishing Co.
chicago.
BIRDS.
Illustrated by COLOR PHOTOGRAPHY.
JOHN JAMES AUDUBON.
OHN JAMES AUDUBON hasalways been a favorite withthe writer, for the invinciblenessof his love of Nature andof birds is only equalled bythe spontaneous freshness of his style,springing from an affectionate and joyousnature. Recently there was foundby accident, in an old calf-skin boundvolume, an autobiography of thenaturalist. It is entitled “Audubon’sStory of his Youth,” and would makea very pretty book. As introductoryto the diaries and ornithologicalbiographies of the birds, it would bevery useful.
Two or three incidents in the life ofthis fascinating character are interestingas showing the influence of theaccidental in ultimate achievement.
“One incident,” he says, “which isas perfect in my memory as if it hadoccurred this very day, I have thoughtthousands of times since, and will nowput on paper as one of the curiousthings which perhaps did lead me inafter times to love birds, and to finallystudy them with pleasure infinite. Mymother had several beautiful parrots,and some monkeys; one of the latterwas a full-grown male of a very largespecies. One morning, while theservants were engaged in arrangingthe room I was in, ‘Pretty Polly’asking for her breakfast as usual,‘Du pain au lait pour le perroquetMignonne,’ (bread and milk for the parrotMignonne,) the man of the woodsprobably thought the bird presumingupon his rights in the scale of nature;be this as it may, he certainly showedhis supremacy in strength over thedenizen of the air, for, walkingdeliberately and uprightly toward thepoor bird, he at once killed it, withunnatural composure. The sensationsof my infant heart at this cruel sightwere agony to me. I prayed theservant to beat the monkey, but he,who for some reason, preferred themonkey to the parrot, refused. Iuttered long and piercing cries, mymother rushed into the room; I wastranquilized; the monkey was foreverafterward chained, and Mignonneburied with all the pomp of a cherishedlost one. This made, as I have said, avery deep impression on my youthfulmind.”
In consequence of the long absencesof his father, who was an admiral inthe French navy, the young naturalist’seducation was neglected, his mothersuffering him to do much as he pleased,and it was not