Part 38

FOOTNOTES:

This was in 1810 or 1811.

This was written in 1835.

Vincent Nolte, in "Fifty Years in Both Hemispheres," gives an account of his meeting on this occasion with Audubon, part of which is as follows: "About ten o'clock I arrived at a small inn, close by the falls of the Juniata River. The landlady showed me into a room and said I perhaps would not mind taking my meal with a strange gentleman, who was already there. This personage struck me as an odd fish. He was sitting at a table before the fire, with a Madras handkerchief wound around his head, exactly in the style of the French mariners of a seaport town.... He showed himself to be an original throughout, but admitted he was a Frenchman by birth, and a native of La Rochelle. However, he had come in his early youth to Louisiana, had grown up in the sea-service, and had gradually become a thorough American. This man, who afterwards won for himself so great a name in natural history, particularly in ornithology, was Audubon." It is needless to say that the personal history of Audubon as here given is entirely erroneous; but as the meeting was in 1811, and the book written from memory in 1854, Mr. Nolte must be pardoned for his misstatements, which were doubtless unintentional.

This was on the journey made by Audubon and his partner, Ferdinand Rozier, from Louisville to St. Genevieve, then in Upper Louisiana. They left Louisville in the autumn of 1810, and Audubon returned in the spring of 1811.

This incident occurred during Audubon's return trip to St. Genevieve in the early spring of 1812.

Sylvia parus, Hemlock Warbler; Ornith. Biog. vol. ii. page 205.

Audubon and Mr. Irish met many times afterwards, the last being, I believe, in Philadelphia, on the eve of Audubon's departure for his Missouri River trip.

Then Philadelphia.

The name given by the wreckers and smugglers to the "Marion."

Plate cclxxxi., ed. 1827-1839; plate ccclxviii., ed. 1843.

The "Moose Hunt" was communicated to me by my young friend, Thomas Lincoln, of Dennysville in Maine.

The last Episode in vol. ii. of the "Ornithological Biographies."

"On the 16th [June, 1778], before sunrise, I departed in the most secret manner, and arrived at Boonesborough on the 20th, after a journey of 160 miles, during which I had but one meal." (Letter of Daniel Boone, who was then forty-three.)

This bird [the White Ibis], to procure the Cray-fish, walks with remarkable care to the mounds of mud which the latter throws up while forming its hole, and breaks up the upper part of the fabric, dropping the fragments into the deep cavity that has been made by the animal. Then the Ibis retires a single step, and patiently waits the result. The Cray-fish, incommoded by the load of earth, instantly sets to work anew, and at last reaches the entrance of its burrow; but the moment it comes in sight the Ibis seizes it with his bill. (The White Ibis, Ibis Alba, Plate CCXXII., Ornith. Biog., vol. iii., p. 176).

Audubon's drawings have been criticised for their flatness. Of this, Cuvier says: "It is difficult to give a true picture of a bird with the same effect of perspective as a landscape, and the lack of this is no defect in a work on Natural History. Naturalists prefer the real color of objects to those accidental tints which are the result of the varied reflections of light necessary to complete picturesque representations, but foreign and even injurious to scientific truth."

This was in 1838; they have since been destroyed by fire, or, at least, the greater number.

INDEX

Abert, Col. John, i. 70.

Abingdon, ii. 218.

Abyssinian, i. 199.

Academie des Sciences, i. 308, 312, 317.

Academy of Arts, Edinburgh, i. 177.

Academy of Sciences, Philadelphia, i. 55, 56, 90, 525.

Academy of Sciences, New York. See New York Academy of Sciences.

Acer saccharinum, ii. 508.

Actitis macularia, i. 365.

Adams, Bernard, ii. 97.