Vasty Audition

One hundred years ago, between 1808 and 1834, an immense, full-bodied man wandered through the wilds of this continent, from the cypress swamps of Florida to Labrador and west to the Rockies. He carried a gun and a sketchbook. His dog padded behind him on the trails.

He had a way of turning up at backwoods settlements, bearded, his pockets bulging, his underclothes gone. The latter he had used up for gun wads. His pockets contained bird skins, sheafs of notes, manuscript. He was the naturalist, John James Audubon, whose grandmanner personality made credentials unnecessary. He had a family down in Kentucky which he supported as best he could in the years when, at one with the wilderness as few men were before or after him, he was "unknown" in the U. S. He took his magnificent work to Edinburgh and was made a member of the Royal Academy. He executed 1,065 life-size figures of North American birds, exactly reproduced and scientifically classified, together with five volumes of text describing bird habits and habitats. To lighten up this Ornithological Biography he inserted, after every fifth bird, an "episode" or "delineation" from his roamings. These sketches, carried through three volumes, constitute by themselves an incomparable volume on early America. Professor Herrick of Western Reserve University, Audubon's biographer, has edited this volume for the first time in English.*

Scientifically Audubon is out of date now. As an observer of contemporary customs nd scenery he is ageless. No Californian will read his description of an earthquake on the Kentucky barrens without a shudder of recognition. No rifleman but will be excited by his careful account of how Kentuckians, for practice, drove nails and snuffed candles with their bullets; how Daniel Boone "barked" squirrels, hitting the limb under their chins to stun, not mash them. Florida land-boomers may read how Mr. Audubon struggled through primeval subdivisions in a hurricane. The odd naturalist, "Monsieur de T.," slaying bats in his bedroom with Audubon's rare violin, bears witness to backwoods eccentricity and hospitality. Floods, prairies, a great pine swamp, the canebrakes of the Ohio, midwinter moose "yards" in Canada, squatters on the Mississippi, the death of a pirate on the Gulf of Mexico-- these and scores of other matters the robust wanderer found time and energy to write down, usually by candle or pineknot light after a long day's tramp.

His periods swell with the breadth and abundance of the unspoiled continent, and with the vigor of a man who could live on it unsheltered. Yet they do not swell over in boasts, exaggeration or exclamatory wind. They have the sweep of Hermann Melville tempered by quiet judgment and an explorer's interest. When Daniel Boone tells a story he is introduced calmly as "a remarkable individual." A charging black bear is made no more ferocious than it seemed to a man who had slain many specimens and knew they were primarily vegetarians. The devouring of a Negro by wolves is told simply, just the way it happened.

Americana is the day's rage, but the hest of it needs no rewriting. Thus this vasty Audubon, who could prevision the cities that were to mar and befoul his beautiful Ohio River; the laying waste of the forests; the slaughter of the deer and wild pigeons. He felt, a century ago, that he must hurry to record the natural state of a world already vanishing. Monuments and societies have been set up in his name by people who hope that it is not yet too late for conservation. If such people are really interested in Audubon, this book will have an enormous sale. The Audubon Societies now list 334,000 members.

*DELINEATIONS OF AMERICAN CHARACTER AND SCENERY--John James Audubon--Edited by Francis Hobart Herrick--Baker ($4.50).