244 Deaxe, Letters of MacGilltvray to Audubon. Ljuly 



Be assured I shall get on as quickly as possible, because I am 

 anxious to do so for your sake, and find great pleasure in reading 

 your descriptions. At the present moment however I cannot 

 venture to fix a period, and you have not requested me to do so. 



Four months ago I heard from a naturalist for the first time 

 that you had been attacked in a London journal, which afforded 

 me an explanation of an expression used by you in your letter 

 from Charleston. He promised to look out the numbers for me 

 but I have not yet seen them. Perhaps the best place for your 

 answer would be the preface to your second volume. 



I have the honor to be. Dear Sir 



Your obedient servant 



W. MacGillivray 



No. 4. 



Edinburgh, 1 1 Gilmore Place 

 Monday, 28th July, 1834. 

 Dear Sir 



Yours of the 24th, I received on the evening of the 26th. That 

 evening I called on Mr. Kidd, & did not find him at home. 

 Today however, I succeeded, but he informed me that he could 

 not deliver the drawings as they were yet unfinished. The paper 

 on the Goshawk, which you say you wrote for Sir Wm. Jardine, 

 I never heard of before, and if it be the one to which you refer in 

 your last letter, as in a box or a sealed parcel, I have it not. You 

 left nothing of any kind with me excepting the skins of 2 birds, 

 and a stuffed Gannet. You ask when the printing may commence, 

 but the question cannot be answered by me. If you had sent the 

 articles in order from i to 50, with the corresponding number of 

 tales and descriptions of scenery, the printing might have been 

 commenced tomorrow, and gone on straight to the end without 

 any impediment. I have finished looking over 25 of your articles, 

 and tonight commence the next parcel, which will, I expect, be 

 done on the 20th of August; in the next parcel I wish you would 

 send those of the first 50 that have not yet come, along with as 

 many more as will make up the 25. If you think of publishing in 

 small size, and reprinting the first volume of the same, the second 



