^°'ii^y^^n Dex\ne, Letters of MacGillivray to Audubon. 243 



No. 3. 



Edinburgh, 11 Gilmore Place 

 1 8th July, 1834. 

 Dear Sir 



I received from Mr. Neill yours of the 9th along with a parcel 

 of 25 descriptions of birds, and now report progress. I com- 

 menced my operations on the ist of July, and have transcribed 

 and corrected eighteen articles, one for each day, but not one on 

 each, the work of Sunday being transferred to Monday. This 

 volume will certainly be much richer and more interesting. It 

 will also be larger. You wish to know my opinion as to the 

 improvement of your style. It seems to me to be much the same 

 as before, but the information which you give is more diversified 

 & more satisfactory. 



Your first volume is only beginning to be known. Chambers 

 has reprinted many of the sketches, and Hunt has one in a late 

 number. Had it been of the post 8vo size, in two volumes it 

 would have gone off in style; but your imperial size and regal 

 price do not answer for radicals, or republicans either. Could 

 you sacrifice the first volume, reprint it of a small size and 

 continue the series so to the end ? In suggesting this, I firmly 

 believe that my only object is to let the book have fair play. 

 Lizars has sold five or six thousand copies of some of his ill- 

 written compilations ; and if you were to issue yours in a similar 

 style — not of writing but of printing — with 20 wood cuts or 

 engravings in each volume, I am certain it would spread over the 

 land like a flock of migratory pigeons. Even without the embel- 

 lishments it would fly, but were you to give it those additional 

 wings, it would sweep along in beautiful curves, like the night- 

 hawk or the purplebreasted swallow. 



I have often thought that your stories would sell very well by 

 themselves, and I am sure that with your celebrity, knowledge 

 and enthusiasm, you have it in your power to become more 

 popular than your glorious pictures can make you of themselves, 

 they being too aristocratic and exclusive. Excuse me for putting 

 down my thoughts just as they occur, and for wandering from my 

 subject, which was the progress of the manuscript. 



