It is now commonly believed that of the three great factors which mold character—environment, training and heritage, the last is the most important, since it alone is predetermined and unalterable. Environment may be uncertain or unsuitable, training defective or deferred, but blood is the one possession of which the child cannot be robbed; and since it sets the limits to possibility, in no small degree must it determine the acquisitions and accomplishments of a lifetime. This, however, is not the whole truth. Race may account for much, but it does not account for everything; the child is effectually robbed whenever it is not permitted to realize to the full upon its inheritance. To be able to convert possibilities into actualities it must receive fit training and right incentives, and if at critical times the proper spur is wanting, its patrimony may be sadly wasted. The "good environment" for the youth, too often thought to be the soft conditions of an easy life, is in truth that only which provides the proper and necessary stimulus. This may be now fear or pride, now hard necessity or bitter want; again, an awakened sense of responsibility or ambition to excel may be induced by concrete examples and fostered, as it often is, by lofty purposes and the uplift of a high ideal. Audubon's life affords a striking proof of the power which environment can exert in awakening dormant capacity, in developing talents to their full and calling into use every force held in reserve. When we consider what his life work finally became, and what he eventually accomplished in a field for which he had no training, except in drawing, we find it easier to wonder at the man than to criticize him. With a formal schooling in France of the slenderest sort, in which the writing of his own language was never completely mastered, at eighteen he came to America and adopted a new tongue, which he first heard from the Quakers. Twenty years more were to elapse before he had a definite plan,—during which his environment was mainly that of a trader and storekeeper in the backwoods, never remote from the white man's frontier, hardly the soil one would seek for the development of budding talents in art, literature or science. Failure in trade was one of the spurs which started Audubon on his ultimate career, for it led to the immediate development of the talents which he possessed; the encouragement which he received from his wife was undoubtedly another. When he finally emerged, like a somewhat wild but well ripened fruit, at the age of forty, rich in experience, ready to absorb what from lack of earlier motives or opportunities he had failed to acquire, and with the determination to succeed, he won recognition as much through his personality and enthusiasm as by his extraordinary versatility and talents.