Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 2 (1898).djvu/254

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THE ZOOLOGIST.

enlivened the woods and the prairies, all looked like enemies, and I turned my eyes from them, as if I could have wished that they had never existed." But this was only the probationary period, and Audubon was to emerge from the wilderness.

The "European Journals," which occupy a large portion of the first volume, detail his visit to these islands, with his portfolio of matchless drawings of the birds he had studied so long, and which belonged to the country he loved so well. He was well, nay, warmly received, and when in Liverpool, to which he was so grateful, Manchester that scarcely equalled his expectations, and Edinburgh, which fairly captivated him, we find recorded the friendships of many well-remembered eminent men, and traits and reminiscences of others perhaps more familiar to some of our readers, as Bewick, Jardine, Selby, and Swainson. We have one delicious insight into the then current philosophy of society. Captain Basil Hall "called to speak to me about my paper on Pigeons; he complained that I expressed the belief that Pigeons were possessed of affection and tenderest love, and that this raised the brute species to a level with man." It was during this journey that Audubon sought and obtained subscribers to his great work, and published the first numbers of the same. The visit to Paris produced few subscribers, but afforded an intercourse with the great Cuvier.

The trip to Labrador was made in 1833, with the object of "procuring birds and making drawings of them for the continuation of the 'Birds of America,' the publication of which was then being carried on in London. The Journal of this excursion is replete with the details of bird-life, and exhibits Audubon as a writer of great descriptive power. As we sail with him to the desolate land we are gradually prepared for the physical horrors of this ornithological paradise. "When we landed and passed the beach, we sunk nearly up to our knees in mosses of various sorts.... A poor, rugged, miserable country; the trees like so many mops of wiry composition, and where the soil is not rocky it is boggy up to a man's waist." The weather is most frequently described under the appellations of rains, fogs, hurricanes. The drawings were made on board ship, with all its uneasy movements, and the cold was sometimes so intense as to render holding the pencil a difficult task. Yet many nests were