Note 105 — Chapter XXIX · SIDELIGHTS ON AUDUBON AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

Signed "Ornithophilus" (see Bibliography, No. 97), and attributed by Coues (see Bibliography, No. 181), with a question mark, to Swainson, but the internal evidence shows conclusively that he was not its author. The writer of this article said that it was not enough to state that Audubon "has invented a new style in the representation of natural objects; for so true are his pictures, that he who has once seen and examined them, can never again look with pleasure on the finest productions of other artists. To paint like Audubon, will henceforth mean to represent Nature as she is.... To relieve, as Mr. Audubon says, the tedium of those who may have imposed upon themselves the task of following an author through the mazes of descriptive ornithology, he has interspersed descriptions of American scenery and manners, gloomy forests, tangled cane-brakes, dismal swamps, majestic rivers, floods, tornadoes, and earthquakes; the migration of the white man, the retreat of the red; the character and pursuits of the backwoodsman.... Much, therefore, is it to be wished that Mr. Audubon would undertake the delineation of the birds of Great Britain, which, with his matchless talents, aided by those of Mr. Havell, would eclipse, not only all other representations of these birds, but even the 'Birds of America,' unrivalled as that work now is."