690 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



one of Walter Scott's novels, and was a relative of the famous British 

 geologist Bakewell. She proved a congenial wife to the naturalist, 

 and gave him valuable aid while he had his great work under way, by 

 helping him to pay the expenses of his enterprise out of the fruits of 

 her own industry. The farm at Mill Grove was sold, a stock of goods 

 was purchased with the proceeds, and Audubon removed with his wife 

 to Louisville, making the journey down the Ohio River in a flat-boat, 

 with two rowers. At Louisville, again, he left business to his partner, 

 and occupied himself with natural history and his drawings. 



In 1810 he was visited at his store by Alexander Wilson, who 

 came to solicit subscriptions to his " Ornithology." He was about to 

 sign the list, when his partner suggested to him, in French, that he 

 could make better drawings than Wilson, and probably knew as much 

 about American birds as he. Wilson understood the remark, and 

 asked Audubon if he had any drawings of birds. Audubon exhibited 

 what he had, and, to Wilson's question if he intended to publish his 

 work, replied that he had never thought of it. The two naturalists 

 seem to have spent some time together. Audubon explored the woods 

 with Wilson, lent him his drawings, and aided him in various ways ; 

 but, after all this, Wilson, in the mortification of his vanity that he had 

 met a superior in his own special field, had it in his heart to enter in 

 his notes against Louisville that " science or literature had not one 

 friend in the place." 



As might be expected, the business at Louisville was not prosper- 

 ous. After four years, marked by two removals to secure better suc- 

 cess, the partnership was dissolved, and Audubon removed to Henderson, 

 Kentucky, in 1812. Another business adventure, entered into with 

 his brother-in-law in New Orleans, failed. Only natural history pros- 

 pered with him. A very large proportion of his work in this line, 

 which bore so noble and so abundant fruit in later years, was done 

 during his residence in Henderson. Aiming to represent the birds 

 which he drew in position as far as possible, he adopted ingenious 

 devices to secure correct views of them as they looked in Nature. 

 Those which he had to shoot he would afterward set up and support 

 in natural attitudes, while he painted them ; others he would view, 

 with their actual surroundings, through a telescope. Audubon's father 

 died about 1812, leaving to him the estate in France and seventeen 

 thousand dollars, which had been deposited with a merchant in Rich- 

 mond, Virginia. " Audubon, however, took no steps to obtain posses- 

 sion of his estate in France, and in after-years, when his sons had 

 grown up, sent one of them to France for the purpose of legally trans- 

 ferring the property to his own sister Rosa." Before Audubon was 

 able to obtain the money from the merchant in Richmond, the latter 

 died insolvent ; and so no benefit accrued to the naturalist from either 

 part of his legacy. 



By the pressure of this disappointment and other failures, Audubon 



