Watermark Dates 



All but 20 of the first 300 plates in the Field 

 Museum copy were printed years after the same plates in 

 the Gifford copy. In addition, the order in which the 

 prints were pulled and colored is often quite erratic. The 

 five prints of number 32, for example, show the follow- 

 ing variation in watermark dates, although the copper- 

 plates were all engraved in 1833: 



Watermarks in the Field Museum set also establish 

 the earliest date at which the set could have been bound 

 up. The endleaves of all four volumes of the set bear 

 watermarks of either 1838 or 1839. In all likelihood the 

 set was bound up in 1839, and perhaps before the Au- 

 dubons and Havells departed from England for America 

 in August of that year. 



All this bibliographic evidence clearly rules out the 

 possibility that Field Museum's copy of The Birds of 

 America is the copy originally owned by Euphemia Gif- 

 ford. If Gifford's copy is still in existence it, too, may be 

 incorrectly identified in Fries's study or it may be one of 

 the many copies whose history Fries was unable to trace. 

 While one might hope that Fries's erroneous description 

 of Field Museum's copy is an isolated case in The Double 



Elephant Folio, his handling of the evidence relating to 

 this copy raises doubts about the reliability of his work as 

 a whole. 



Part of Fries's description of the Stark Foundation 

 (Audubon's) copy could be applied verbatim to Field 

 Museum's copy: 



The 435 prints with an additional 13 . . . have been 

 arranged systematically (instead of numerically) accord- 

 ing to Audobon's Synopsis of the Birds of North America. 

 Thus the first print in Volume 1 is not the Turkey but the 

 California Turkey-vulture, plate number 426. 5 



Fries mentions the presence of the 13 extra plates in the 

 Field Museum copy but does not describe the copy as 

 bound in systematic order, something he was well aware 

 of since he visited the Museum to examine the copy in 

 1970. A generous interpretation of this omission would 

 be to regard it as an oversight. Fries was committed to 

 the "Gifford provenance," solely on the basis of the 

 "ottoman," and quotes the correspondence (referred to 

 above) that verifies Gifford's receipt of a regular sub- 

 scriber's copy. Such a copy could not be bound up in 

 systematic order, as has been shown. 



More troubling is an exceedingly awkward mis- 

 interpretation of a source document in Fries's 

 attempt to make Gifford into one of the recip- 

 ients of the 13 extra plates. He writes: 



On 28 August 1838 Victor Audubon wrote the engraver 

 Havell that he wished "6 copies printed of those plates 

 which have old or young birds to add on them or 

 females&c." There is evidence that Miss Gifford 

 received one of these sets. 105 6 



In fact, there is no such evidence in the document he 

 cites. Gifford is not even mentioned in the letter of 28 

 August 1838, nor does any other source link Gifford to 

 the extra plates. Perhaps Fries had in mind the following 

 letter of 26 September 1838, also from Victor Audubon 

 to Havell, which happens to mention both Gifford and 

 the extra plates: 



We are all quite well, and are pushing the printing here 

 [of the fifth volume of Audubon's Ornithological Biog- 

 raphy, published in Edinburgh] as fast as we can — Please 

 send Mrs. Gifford's, Mr. Young's & all other 4th vols, [of 

 The Birds of America] for the English delivery as soon as 

 ready, to their respective destinations. When you write 

 let us hear how you are getting on with every thing and if 

 you have yet any idea of when the 15 setts will be ready 

 [these copies of the folio were to be sold in America]. 

 The additional birds you will please print so as to make 

 in all 6 setts of these particular plates extra if you find 



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