Exe 
280 Burns, Miss Lawson's Recollections. 
“Toward the close of his life he did some queer things. He must 
have destroyed the likeness of himself that his son painted and also 
the plates that my father engraved for his proposed work on 
animals (quadrupeds); nothing of the kind was found among his 
effects and not a line of the descriptions I know he had written. 
He dropped this work on a reverse of fortune; having lost heavily 
in railroads. Had the work been continued it would have been an 
honor to the country. There are only two works that would have 
approached it: Scotts’ Dogs and Churchs’ Horses. There were 
only four plates engraved. Mr. Ord allowed the Academy of 
Natural Sciences to print a limited number of copies from the plates 
of the Rat and Ground Hog, I think about 100 impressions. I 
have only one copy of the frontispiece, a group of the smaller 
Quadrupeds, Weasel &c. drawn by Le Sueur, a French artist, and 
very prettily engraved. I wish I could send you entirely finished 
copies, but the Ground Hog is the only one that is so. The Elk 
and the Florida Rat are not finished, as you will observe on the 
impressions of the Rat that my father has written ‘unfinished.’ 
In the Ord letter edited by Dr. Coues, he mentions presenting 
impressions to Leach of the British Museum. Mr. Ord often 
expressed a determination that no one should profit by these 
engravings and no one has done so. To his other oddities he 
added the last whim of leaving all he died possessed of, about 
$40,000. to the Penn. Hospital for the Insane, although he had 
nephews and nieces in very limited circumstances. Toward the 
close of his life he shut himself out entirely from the world, living 
with his books. He had lost most of his old friends and made no 
new ones.” 
“Charles Bonaparte,” writes Miss Lawson, “married one of his 
cousins (Zenaide) a daughter of Joseph, ex-king of Spain. She 
accompanied her husband several times to our house. Her sis- 
ter Charlette, Joseph’s youngest daughter, was quite an artist. 
While she lived with her father at Bordentown, she took several 
views on the Delaware. Mr. Ord accompanied her on some of 
these occasions and said that he had never seen such a rapid pencil. 
She afterward engraved all the drawings she took here, on stone, 
and Charles Bonaparte gave father impressions of her’ work. 
She married a cousin, I think a son of Jerome, who also was an 
