Page:John James Audubon (Burroughs).djvu/159

Rh The colouring in Audubon's birds is also often exaggerated. His purple finch is as brilliant as a rose, whereas at its best, this bird is a dull carmine. Either the Baltimore oriole has changed its habits of nest-building since Audubon's day, or else he was wrong in his drawing of the nest of that bird, in making the opening on the side near the top. I have never seen an oriole's nest that was not open at the top. In his drawings of a group of robins, one misses some of the most characteristic poses of that bird, while some of the attitudes that are portrayed are not common and familiar ones. But in the face of all that he accomplished, and against such odds, and taking into consideration also the changes that may have crept in through engraver and colourists, it ill becomes us to indulge in captious criticisms. Let us rather repeat Audubon's own remark on realising how far short his drawings came of