CAPTURING NATURE

Explaining that ``Our selections, with minor editing, come from Maria Audubon (1986), Audubon and His Journals,'' the Roops choose passages that outline Audubon's life, work, and thought, effectively evoking a man for whom painting birds was ``almost a mania,'' who ``would even give up doing a head, the profits of which would have supplied our wants for a week, to represent a citizen of the feathered tribe,'' and who wondered prophetically about imminent effects of ``the surplus population of Europe coming to assist in the destruction of the forest.'' The book is attractively furnished with excellent reproductions (titled but not dated); Farley's rather stolid paintings suffer by comparison, ironically underlining Audubon's skill. The text, offered without dates or ellipses, sounds retrospective rather than like a journal; readers capable enough to cope with its vocabulary would be better served by having more clues to specific sources. A chronology and index, too, are wanting. Still, lucid and attractive. List of secondary sources. (Autobiography. 10-14)