Abstract
THIS work may be described as the standard biography of Audubon, from which the lighter and more romantic versions which have appeared from time to time have largely been drawn. It is strange that a life so full of genuine romance and adventure, a personality so individual, magnificent alike in stubborn courage and childlike carelessness and candour, should fail to satisfy the appetites of so many biographers without the added condiment of a fictitious royal birth. Prof. Herrick's careful account of Audubon's early life, in the first edition, would seem to have settled the matter; but subsequent publications have again promulgated the wild hypothesis that the poor fragile Dauphin and the vigorous naturalist were one and the same: certain members of the Audubon family were drawn to the idea, disliking the illegitimate and Creole birth of their ancestor. Prof. Herrick's new foreword and postscript must convince all but the wilfully credulous.
Audubon, the Naturalist:
a History of his Life and Time. By Prof. Francis Hobart Herrick. Second edition, two volumes in one. Pp. xcii + 451 + 500 + 56 plates. (New York and London: D. Appleton-Century Co., Inc., 1938.) 25s. net.
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G., E. Audubon. Nature 142, 645 (1938). https://doi.org/10.1038/142645a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/142645a0