Some have complained that Audubon, in striving for effect, too often exaggerated the action of his subjects; his birds, like the Frenchman he was, gesticulate too much, while Wilson's were more cautious or sedate, as became a canny Scot. The complaint may be well founded, but the explanation is too trivial for serious consideration. Wilson, like his predecessors, regardless of nationality, merely followed custom, which led by the path of least resistance. Barraband and all the best French artists before him in depicting bird and animal life had done the same, and in their hands the perch, were the subject a bird, became stereotyped to the last degree, as if inserted with a rubber stamp. Audubon followed the same course until he became imbued with the desire of endowing his animals with all the moving energy of which they were capable, whether in seizing their prey, feeding their young, or fighting their enemies. It is well known that many an animal, though ordinarily cautious or even timid, can be roused to vigorous action under the spur of emotion, as when its young are suddenly threatened, and be it warbler, bluebird, or cuckoo, may become a contortionist at a moment's notice. Very few of the 1,065 life-size drawings of birds which appear in his large plates could be truly described as fantastic or unnatural. Audubon's problem was rendered more difficult by the fact that all of his animals were drawn to the size of life, and because his desire and style compelled him to represent the utmost detail, even to the barbs of a feather or the individual hairs of a mammal. When a landscape was to be included it was not an easy task to harmonize life-sized objects in the foreground with receding objects, and here he sometimes failed. Some of his least happy compositions, however, were the result of haste, as an examination of the originals of his _Birds of America_ has clearly shown; when hard pressed for time he would resort to the scissors and paste, in order to combine the parts of several distinct drawings into one plate, and often leave the backgrounds to be supplied entirely by the engraver. One of the few grotesque results of such methods is seen in plate 141, wherein are represented the Goshawk and the Stanley Hawk; the latter, which was originally designed for different surroundings, has quite lost its center of gravity on an islet amid stream. An early reviewer thought that the artist must surely have intended this for a caricature, as in the case of one of Hogarth's famous prints, in which a man on a distant hill is lighting his pipe at a candle held out of a window in the foreground.