AUDOUIN, JEAN VICTOR, a distinguished French entomologist, was born at Paris, April 27, 1797. He began the study of law, but was diverted from it by his strong predilection for natural history, which subsequently led him to enter the medical profession. In 1824 he was appointed assistant to Latreille in the entomological chair at the Paris museum of natural history, and succeeded him in 1833. He established in 1824, in conjunction with Dumas and Adolphe Brongniart, the Annales des Sciences Naturelles, to which he made numerous valuable contribu tions, generally in co-operation with M. Milne-Edwards. The greater part of his other papers are contained in the Transactions of the Entomological Society, of which he was one of the founders, and for many years president. In 1838 he became a member of the Academy of Sciences. He died in 1841, more from the effects of mental than of bodily exhaustion. His principal work, Histoire des Insectes nuisibles a la Vigne, was continued after his death by Milne-Edwards and Blanchard, and published in 1842.
AUDRAN, the name of a family of French artists and engravers, who for several generations were distinguished in the same line. The first who devoted himself to the art of engraving was Claude Audran, born 1592, and the last was Benoit, Claude s great-grandson, who died in 1712. The two most distinguished members of the family are the following :—
Audran, Gérard, or Girard, the most celebrated "French engraver, was the third son of Claude Audran, and was born at Lyons in 1640. He was taught the first principles of design and engraving by his father; and, following the example of his brother, went to Paris to perfect himself in his art. He there, in 1G66, engraved for Le Brun Constantine s Battle with Maxentius, his Triumph, and the Stoning of Stephen, which gave great satisfaction to the painter, and placed Audran in the very first rank of engravers at Paris. Next year he set out for Rome, where he resided three years, and engraved several fine plates. That great patron of the arts, M. Colbert, was so struck with the beauty of Audran s works, that he per suaded Louis XIV. to recall him to Paris. On his return he applied himself assiduously to engraving, and was appointed engraver to the king, from whom he received great encouragement. In the year 1681 he was admitted to the council of the Royal Academy. He died at Paris in 1703. His engravings of Le Brun s Battles of Alexander are regarded as the best of his numerous works, " He was," says the Abbe Fontenai, " the most celebrated engraver that ever existed in the historical line. We have several subjects, which he engraved from his own designs, that manifested as much taste as character and facility. But in the Battles of Alexander he surpassed even the expectations of Le Brun himself." Gerard published in 1683 a work entitled Les proportions du corps humain mesurees sur les jylus belles figures de Vantiquite, which has "been translated into English.
Audran, Jean, nephew of Gerard, was born at Lyons in 1667. After having received instructions from his father, he went to Paris to perfect himself in the art of engraving under his uncle, next to whom he was the most distin guished member of his family. At the age of twenty his genius began to display itself in a surprising manner ; and his subsequent success was such, that in 1707 he obtained the title of engraver to the king, Louis XIV, who allowed him a pension, with apartments in the Gobelins; and the following year he was made a member of the Royal Academy. He was eighty years of age before he quitted the graver, and nearly ninety when he died. The best prints of this artist are those which appear not so pleasing to the eye at first sight. In these the etching constitutes a great part ; and he has finished them in a bold, rough style. The Rape of the Salines, after Poussin, is con sidered his masterpiece.
AUDUBON, JOHN JAMES, a well-known naturalist, was
born in 1781 in Louisiana, where his parents, who were
French Protestants, had taken up their residence while it
was still a Spanish colony. They afterwards settled in
Pennsylvania. From his early years he had a passion for
observing the habits and appearances of birds, and attempting delineations of them from nature. At the age of fifteen
he was sent to Paris, and remained there about two years,
when among other studies he took some lessons in the
drawing-school of David. On returning to America his
father established him in a plantation in Pennsylvania, and
he soon after married. But nothing could damp his ardour
for natural history. For fifteen years he annually explored
the depths of the primeval forests of America in long and
hazardous expeditions, far from his family and his home.
In these excursions he acquired the facility of making those
spirited drawings of birds that gives such value to his
magnificent work, The Birds of America. At that period
he had not dreamed of any publication of his labours; as
he informs us, "it was not the desire of fame that
prompted to those long exiles ; it was simply the enjoyment
of nature." He afterwards removed with his family to the
village of Henderson on the banks of the Ohio, where he
continued his researches in natural history for several years,
and at length set out for Philadelphia with a portfolio
containing 200 sheets filled with coloured delineations
of about 1000 birds. Business obliged him to quit Philadelphia unexpectedly for some weeks, and he deposited his
portfolio in the warehouse of a friend ; but to his intense
dismay and mortification he found, on his return, that these
precious fruits of his wanderings and his labours had been
totally destroyed by rats. The shock threw him into a
fever of several weeks duration, that well-nigh proved
fatal. But his native energy returned with returning
health; and he resumed his gun and his game-bag, his
pencils and his drawing-book, and plunged again into the
recesses of the backwoods. In about three years he had
again filled his portfolio, and then rejoined his family, who
had in the meantime gone to Louisiana. After a short
sojourn there he set out for the Old World, to exhibit to
the ornithologists of Europe the riches of America in that
department of natural history.
In 1826 Audubon arrivedat Liverpool, where the merits of his spirited delineations of American birds were immediately recognised. An exhibition of them to the public in the galleries of the Royal Institution of that town was so successful that it was repeated at Manchester and at Edinburgh, where they were no less admired. When he proposed to publish a work on the birds of America, several naturalists advised him to issue the work in large quarto, as the most useful size for the lovers of natural history, and the most likely to afford him a sufficient number of subscribers to remunerate his labours. At first he yielded to this advice, and acknowledged its soundness ; but finally he decided that his work should eclipse every other ornithological publication. Every bird was to be delineated of the size of life, and to each species a whole page was to be devoted; consequently, the largest elephant folio paper was to receive the impressions. This necessarily increased the expense of the work so much as to put it beyond the reach of most scientific naturalists which accounts for the small number of persons who, for a considerable time, could be reckoned among his supporters in the gigantic under taking. The exceptionally high character of the work, however, gradually became known; and a sufficient number of subscribers was at length obtained in Great Britain and America, during the ten or twelve years that the work was going through the press, to indemnify him
