INTRODUCTION 3 



Having reaped the fruits of the Revolution, it was 

 enjoying peace under the Restoration; moreover, it 

 was taking a leading part in the advancement of natu- 

 ral science, of which Cuvier was the acknowledged dean. 

 It was but a year before the death of blind and aged 

 Lamarck, neglected and forgotten then, but destined 

 after the lapse of three-quarters of a century to have a 

 monument raised to his memory by contributions from 

 every part of Europe and America, and to be recog- 

 nized as the first great evolutionist of the modern school. 

 Audubon had not seen his ancestral capital for up- 

 wards of thirty years, not since as a young man he was 

 sent from his father's home near Nantes to study draw- 

 ing in the studio of David, at the Louvre. Though in 

 the land of his fathers and speaking his native tongue, 

 his visit was tinged with disappointment. At the age 

 of forty-three he was engaged in an enterprise which 

 stands unique in the annals of science and literature. 

 But fifty plates, or ten numbers, of his incomparable 

 series had been engraved, and this work had then but 

 thirty subscribers. That he was bound to sink or swim 

 he knew full well. On August 30 he wrote: "My 

 subscribers are yet far from enough to pay my ex- 

 penses, and my purse suffers severely from want of 

 greater patronage." This want he had hoped to satisfy 

 in France, but after an experience of eight weeks, and 

 an expenditure, as he records, of forty pounds, he was 

 obliged to leave Paris with only thirteen additional 

 names on his list. Yet among the latter, it should be 

 noticed, were those of George Cuvier, the Duke of Or- 

 leans and King Charles X, while six copies had been 

 ordered by the Minister of the Interior for distribution 

 among the more important libraries of Paris. More- 

 over, he had won the friendship and encomiums of 



