siana was a province of Spain a little dark-eyed
boy used to wander among the fields and groves of his father's
plantation studying with eager delight the works of nature around him.

Lying under the orange-trees watching the mocking-bird, or learning
from his mother's lips the names of the flowers that grew in every
corner of the plantation, he soon came to feel that he was part of
that beautiful world, whose language was the songs of birds and whose
boundaries extended to every place where a blossom lifted its head
above the green sod. To him, as he said years afterward, the birds
were playmates and the flowers dear friends, and before he could
distinguish between the azure of the sky and the emerald of the
grass he had formed an intimacy with them so close and endearing
that whenever removed from their presence he felt a loneliness almost
unbearable. No other companions suited him so well, and no roof
seemed so secure as that formed of the dense foliage under which the
feathered tribes resorted, or the caves and rocks to which the curlew
and cormorant retired to protect themselves from the fury of the
tempest. In these words, recorded by himself, we read the first
chapter of the life history of John James Audubon, the American
naturalist and the author of one of the early classics of American
literature.

In those early days his father was Audubon's teacher, and hand in hand
they searched the groves for new specimens, or lingered over the nests
where lay the helpless young. It was his father who taught him to
look upon the shining eggs as 'flowers in the bud,' and to note the
different characteristics which distinguished them. These excursions
were seasons of joy, but when the time came for the birds to take
their annual departure the joy was turned to sorrow. To the young
naturalist a dead bird, though beautifully preserved and mounted, gave
no pleasure. It seemed but a mockery of life, and the constant care
needed to keep the specimens in good condition brought an additional
sense of loss. Was there no way in which the memory of these feathered
friends might be kept fresh and beautiful? He writes that he turned in
his anxiety to his father, who in answer laid before him a volume of
illustrations. Audubon turned over the leaves with a new hope in
his heart, and although the pictures were badly executed the idea
satisfied him. Although he was unconscious of it, it was the moment of
the birth of his own great life w