Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/714

696 and prairies, which can never be restored or so well described again. Having spent the winter of 1836-'37 at Charleston, with excursions to the sea-islands, Savannah, and Florida, Audubon, in the spring of 1837, sailed in a revenue-cutter for explorations in the Gulf of Mexico, of which he has left sketches of scenes in the Louisiana bayous, and in Texas. In 1838 he returned to Edinburgh, where he spent several months in preparing the fourth and fifth volumes of the "Ornithological Biography" and in finishing the drawings for the "Birds." In 1839 Audubon came back to the United States for the last time, bought an estate on the banks of the Hudson River, which he called Minniesland—now Audubon Park, and within the city of New York—and engaged in the preparation of an edition of the "Birds" in volumes of a reduced size. In this edition the matter was classified, a feature which had not been found practicable in the method of publication of the original edition. He had also had in hand for some time a book on the "Quadrupeds of America," for which he, his sons, Victor Gifford and John Woodhouse Audubon, and the Rev. John Bachman, of Charleston, South Carolina, had gathered much material. A trip to the Rocky Mountains had been planned in connection with this work, but Audubon was induced to give it up, after having gone as far as the Yellowstone River, on account of his age. The first volume of the "Quadrupeds," which was largely the work of his collaborators, was published in 1846, and the last volume in 1854, after Audubon's death. During the last four years of his life, Audubon became weak in mind, and not able to do any regular work. "The interval of about three years," says Mrs. Audubon, "which passed between the time of Audubon's return from the West and the period when his mind began to fail, was a short and sweet twilight to his adventurous career. His habits were simple. Rising almost with the sun, he proceeded to the woods to view his feathered favorites till the hour at which the family usually breakfasted, except when he had drawing to do, when he sat closely to his work. After breakfast he drew till noon, and then took a long walk. At nine in the evening he generally retired. ... He was very fond of his grandchildren, and used often to take them on his knees and sing to them amusing French songs that he had learned in France when he was a boy. ... After 1848 the naturalist's mind entirely failed him, and during the last years of his life his eye lost its brightness, and he had to be led to his daily walks by the hand of a servant."

Various estimates of Audubon's character and work, and accounts of his appearance have been given us, all to his praise. Dr. Griswold says, in his "Prose-Writers of America," that his highest claim to admiration "is founded upon his drawings in natural history, in which he has exhibited a perfection never before attempted. In all our climates in the clear atmosphere, by the dashing waters, amid the grand old forests, with their peculiar and many-tinted foliage, by him first