64 AUDUBON 



interesting, so I shall set to at once. I cannot, how- 

 ever, give scientific descriptions, and here must have 

 assistance." 



His choice of an assistant would have been his friend 

 Mr. William Swainson, but this could not be arranged, 

 and Mr. James Wilson recommended Mr. William Mac- 

 Gillivray.^ Of this gentleman Mr. D. G. Elliot says : ^ 

 " No better or more fortunate choice could have been 

 made. Audubon worked incessantly, MacGillivray keep- 

 ing abreast of him, and Mrs. Audubon re-wrote the entire 

 manuscript to send to America, and secure the copyright 

 there." The happy result of this association of two great 

 men, so different in most respects as Audubon and Mac- 

 Gillivray, is characterized by Dr. Coues in the following 

 terms ("Key to North American Birds," 2d ed., 1884, 

 p. xxii) : " Vivid and ardent was his genius, matchless he 

 was both with pen and pencil in giving life and spirit to 

 the beautiful objects he delineated with passionate love; 

 but there was a strong and patient worker by his side, — 

 William MacGillivray, the countr}-man of Wilson, destined 

 to lend the sturdy Scotch fibre to an Audubonian cpoch.^ 

 The brilliant French-American Naturalist was little of a 

 ' scientist.' Of his work the magical beauties of form and 

 color and movement are all his ; his page is redolent of 

 Nature's fragrance ; but MacGillivray's are the bone and 

 sinew, the hidden anatomical parts beneath the lovely 

 face, the nomenclature, the classification, — in a word, the 

 technicalities of the science." 



1 There has been much question as to the spelling of MacGillivray's 

 name, Professor Newton and most others writing it Macgillivray, but in the 

 autograph letters we own the capital " G " is always used. 



- Address at the special meeting of the Xew York Academy of Sciences, 

 April 26, 1S93. 



' Referring to one of the six "epochs" into which, in the same work, 

 Dr. Coues divided the progress of American Ornithology. His "Audubon 

 epoch" extends from 1S24 to 1853, and one of the four periods into which 

 this epoch is divided is the " Audubonian period," 1834-1S53. 



