Books: Author Audubon

AUDUBON'S AMERICA—Edited by Donald Culross Peattie—Houghton Mifflin ($6).

John James Audubon migrated up & down early 19th-Century North America about as freely as the birds he painted. When he was not padding through the Kentucky forest or slinking about bird-abundant Feliciana Parish, he was flat-boating on the Mississippi and Ohio, exploring Florida's St. Johns River or sailing along Louisiana's Gulf Coast. In Labrador he hunted seals, in the Dakotas buffalo. He traveled up the Big Muddy to the Rocky Mountains. Everywhere he painted birds magnificently, sometimes painted animals almost as well.

He also...