His perceptive powers, of course, led his reflective. His sharpness and quickness of eye surprised even the Indians. He says: "My _observatory nerves_ never gave way."

His similes and metaphors were largely drawn from the animal world. Thus he says, "I am as dull as a beetle," during his enforced stay in London. While he was showing his drawings to Mr. Rathbone, he says: "I was panting like the winged pheasant." At a dinner in some noble house in England he said that the men servants "moved as quietly as killdeers." On another occasion, when the hostess failed to put him at his ease: "There I stood, motionless as a Heron."

With all his courage and buoyancy, Audubon was subject to fits of depression, probably the result largely of his enforced separation from his family. On one occasion in Edinburgh he speaks of these attacks, and refers pathetically to others he had had: "But that was in beloved America, where the ocean did not roll between me and my wife and sons."

Never was a more patriotic American. He loved his adopted country above all other lands in which he had journeyed.