1898. ] NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 49 
as crazy, his wife and family alone gave him encouragement. 
His wife, he writes, “ determined that my genius should prevail, 
and that my final success as an ornithologist should be tri- 
umphant.” Always his wife,—wherever throughout his career, 
we learn of trouble, disappointments, vexation of all kinds, and 
monetary difficulties innumerable overtaking him, it is always 
his wife who encourages the despairing heart, strengthens the 
weakening faith and points him onward to the distant goal, 
which her woman’s trust in his abilities shall surely help him to 
obtain. 
His trip with Stein was a failure financially, and returning to 
Natchez he went to Philadelphia. There he met the artist 
Sully, who gave him valuable lessons in oil painting, and he 
worked hard to complete his drawings of birds. His friends 
and the engravers of Wilson’s plates all recommended him to 
visit Europe, and he decided to follow their advice, and left 
Philadelphia to return to Bayou Sara. In New York he was 
introduced by Dr. DeKay to the members of the Lyceum of 
Natural History, now the Academy of Sciences, which has been 
instrumental in raising the monument this day unveiled, and 
under whose auspices we meet this evening. His drawings 
were exhibited to the members, “among whom,” he says, ‘“ I 
felt awkward and uncomfortable. After living among such 
people I feel clouded and depressed; remember I have done 
nothing, and fear I may die unknown. I feel I am strange to 
all but the birds of America. Ina few days I shall be in the 
woods and quite forgotten.” 
On arriving at Bayou Sara he began to consider what he 
could do to hasten the publication of his drawings. His wife 
was receiving a large income for those days, nearly $3,000, 
which she offered to give him, and he resolved on an effort to 
increase the amount. From Woodville came a special invita- 
tion to teach dancing, and a class of sixty pupils was formed. 
‘The dancing speculation,” he says, “ fetched $2,000,and with this 
capital and my wife’s savings I was now able to foresee a suc- 
cessful issue to my great ornithological work.” 
On 26th April, 1826, he sailed from New Orleans for Liver- 
pool in the ship Delos, provided with numerous letters of intro- 
duction, and reached his destination on the 20th July. In 
Edinburgh he met Mr. Lizars, the engraver of Selby’s great 
work on British Birds, who offered to bring out the first number 
of the Birds of America, and on the 28th November he was pre- 
sented with a proof of the first plate. 
He was well received here, and on December 10th writes: 
TRANSACTIONS N. Y. AcaD. Sct. VOL. XIII. Sig. 3, Nov. 24, 1893. 
