DEBUT AS A NATURALIST 329 



nature herself. Ord, as we have seen, had edited the 

 eighth and written the ninth, or concluding, volume of 

 Wilson's American Ornithology, as well as a life of its 

 author ; the appearance of a new star in the ornithologi- 

 cal horizon may not have been a welcome sight. At 

 all events, we soon find him engaged upon a new edition 

 of Wilson's work. 2 Ord had objected to Audubon's 

 method of combining plants and other accessories with 

 his drawings of birds, a criticism that in the case of 

 purely technical works could be easily sustained, and 

 some of his later charges, though carried too far, were 

 not wholly without foundation. 3 



Bonaparte, 4 on the other hand, was captivated by 



2 This was the third edition of the American Ornithology, issued by 

 Messrs. Collins & Company in New York and by Harrison Hall of Phila- 

 delphia, in three octavo volumes, with an atlas of 7G plates colored by 

 hand, in 1838-9. Mr. Hall, who appears to have been the person most 

 interested financially in this edition, was a brother of James Hall, author 

 of a notorious review in which this work was praised at the expense of 

 Audubon, who was viciously attacked (see Bibliography, No. 133). Friends 

 of Audubon repeatedly asserted that as soon as his popularity and success 

 began to check the sales of Wilson's work, Ord and a few others, aided by 

 interested publishers, began a systematic series of attacks, some notice of 

 which is taken in Chapter XXVIII. 



3 See Chapter XIV. 



4 Charles Lucien Jules Laurent Bonaparte, Prince of Canino and 

 Musignano, the eldest son of Lucien, and nephew of Napoleon, Bonaparte, 

 was born at Paris in 1803, and died there in 1857. At this time he 

 was settled with his uncle and father-in-law, Joseph Bonaparte, former King 

 of Spain, at Philadelphia, and there and at Bordentown, New Jersey, 

 where Joseph had an estate, he undertook the study of American birds. 

 His best known scientific works are: American Ornithology, or the Natural 

 History of the Birds of the United States, not Given by Wilson, 4 volumes, 

 quarto, with 27 colored plates, Philadelphia, 1825-1833; and Iconographica 

 della Fauna Italica, Rome, 1833-1841. In 1828 he retired to Italy, where 

 he was devoted to literary and scientific pursuits. He was an early sub- 

 scriber to Audubon's Birds of America, but their relations were somewhat 

 strained on the publication of the Ornithological Biography in 1831 (see 

 Chapter XXIX). Bonaparte later entered politics in Italy, and was 

 leader of the republican party at Rome in 1848 and 1849; after having been 

 expelled from France by the order of Louis Napoleon, he was permitted 

 to return in 1850, and became director of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. 



He was a closet naturalist rather than a field student, but did much 

 for the reform of nomenclature. In his Ornithology the number of American 

 birds was raised to 3G6, nearly one hundred having been added since the 



