x AUDUBON THE NATURALIST 



press my gratitude to Professor Laubscher for his able co- 

 operation in securing transcriptions and photographs, and to 

 Monsieur Lavigne for his kind permission to use them, as well 

 as for his careful response to numerous questions which arose 

 in the course of the investigation. 



In dealing with letters and documents, of whatever kind, 

 in manuscript, I have made it my invariable rule to reproduce 

 the form and substance of the record as it exists as exactly 

 as possible; in translations, however, no attempt has been 

 made to preserve any minor idiosyncrasies of the writer. The 

 source of all scientific, literary or historical material previously 

 published is indicated in footnotes, and the reader will find 

 copious references to hitherto unpublished documents, which 

 in their complete and original form, with or without transla- 

 tions, together with an annotated Bibliography, have been 

 gathered in Appendices at the end of Volume II. For con- 

 venience of reference each chapter has been treated as a unit 

 so far as the footnotes are concerned, and the quoted author's 

 name, with the title of his work in addition to the bibliographic 

 number, has been given in nearly every instance. 



Besides the many coadjutors whose friendly aid has been 

 gladly ajknowledged in the body of this work, I now wish to 

 offer my sincere thanks, in particular, to the Misses Maria 

 R. and Florence Audubon, granddaughters of the naturalist, 

 who have shown me many courtesies, and to the Hon. Myron 

 T. Herrick, late American Ambassador to France, for his 

 kindly assistance in obtaining documentary transcripts from 

 the Department of the Marine at Paris. I am under special 

 obligations also to the librarians of the British Museum and Ox- 

 ford University, the Linnaean and Zoological Societies of Lon- 

 don, the Jardin des Plantes at Paris, the Public Libraries of 

 Boston and New York, and the libraries of the Historical So- 

 cieties of New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Louisiana, as 

 well as to the Director of the Museum of Comparative Zoology 

 of Harvard University, and to the American Museum of 

 Natural History in New York City, for photographs of paint- 

 ings and other objects, for permission to read or copy manu- 



