Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/707

Rh the somewhat awkward position the bird is in, there is life in it." The second picture, that of a coot, "is a marked improvement on the magpie. Far more pains have been taken with the feet, legs, bill, and eye, though little has been gained in the natural attitude of the bird. ... Except very faintly in the wing, no attempt has been made to individualize the feathers, the entire body being of a dead black, worked in either by burned cork or crayon." Dr. Shufeldt also remarks that, "as is usually the case among juvenile artists, both this bird and the magpie are represented upon direct lateral view, and no evidence has yet appeared to hint to us of the wonderful power Audubon eventually came to possess in figuring his birds in their every attitude." The green woodpecker "is a wonderful improvement, in every particular, upon both of the others. The details of the plumage and other structures are brought out with great delicacy, and refinement of touch; while the attitude of the bird, an old male, is even better than many of those published in his famous work. The colors are soft, and have been so handled as to lend to the plumage a very flossy and natural appearance, while the old trunk, upon the side of which the bird is represented, presents several evidences of an increase of the power to paint such objects."

When about seventeen or eighteen years old, young Audubon returned to the United States, and his father, willing to gratify his now decided tastes, settled him upon a farm which he owned near Philadelphia, "Mill Grove," at the mouth of Perkiomen Creek. Here he had full opportunity for the gratification of his huntsman's and naturalist's inclination, and improved it so industriously that he appeared to be good for little else. Desiring to form a matrimonial engagement with Lucy Bakewell, he was advised by the father of the young lady to go into business, and he accordingly entered the employment of a firm in New York; but even here it was the study of Nature and not trade that engaged his attention. "For a period of twenty years," he confesses in the biographical preface to his "Birds," "my life was a series of vicissitudes. I tried various branches of commerce, but they all proved unprofitable, doubtless because my whole mind was ever filled with my passion for rambling and admiring those objects of Nature from which alone I received the purest gratification." It is in connection with the relation of the story of a hurricane, while he was living at Henderson, years after his Philadelphia experiences, that he says that, just before the breaking out of the awful storm, his thoughts were, "for once, at least, in the course of my life, entirely engaged in commercial speculations." He soon gave up his New York engagement, and shortly afterward formed a partnership with Ferdinand Rosier to go into trade at Louisville, Kentucky. His settlement at this place having been determined upon, he was married to Miss Bakewell in April, 1808. This lady was a descendant of the Peverils of the Peak, one of whom has given name to