CHAPTER XXV 



AUDUBON'S LETTERPRESS AND ITS RIVALS 



Settlement in London — Starts on canvassing tour with his wife — Change of 

 plans — In Edinburgh — Discovery of MacGillivray — His hand in the 

 Ornithological Biography — Rival editions of Wilson and Bonaparte — 

 Brown's extraordinary atlas — Reception of the Biography — Joseph 

 Bartholomew Kidd and the Ornithological Gallery — In London again. 



On the 1st of April, 1830, Audubon and his wife 

 sailed from New York in the packet ship Pacific, bound 

 for Liverpool, where they landed after a voyage of 

 twenty-five days. Upon returning to London the nat- 

 uralist found that upon the 18th of the preceding March 

 he had been elected to membership in the Royal Society, 

 an honor for which he felt indebted to Lord Stanley 

 and his friend Children, of the British Museum; after 

 paying the entrance fee of £50, he took his seat in that 

 body on the 6th of May. The painting of pictures was 

 at once resumed to meet his heavy expenses, but towards 

 the end of July he started with Mrs. Audubon on a 

 canvassing tour, in the course of which his plans sud- 

 denly were changed so that London did not see him 

 again for nearly a year. 1 On this journey they touched 

 at Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, York, Hull, Scar- 

 borough, Whitby, New Castle, and Belford, to visit the 

 Selbys, and on the 13th of October reached Edinburgh, 

 where they were soon comfortably settled in the natural- 

 ist's old lodging place, the house of Mrs. Dickey, Num- 

 ber 26, George Street. 



1 His correspondence with William Swainson from this point, and the 

 history of his letterpress so far as that naturalist was concerned, will be 

 unfolded later (see Chapter XXIX). 



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