FINAL WORK DAYS 269 



John Bachman to Edward Harris 



CHARLESTON, Decent. $4> 1845. 



Friend Harris, you can be of service to me, to the Audubons 

 & the cause of science. I will tell you how. 



I find the Audubons are not aware of what is wanted in 

 the publication of the Quadrupeds. All they care about is to 

 get out a No. of engravings in two months. They have not 

 sent me one single book out of a list of 100 I gave them and 

 only 6 lines copied from a book after having written for them 

 for 4 years. When he published his birds he collected hundreds 

 of thousands of specimens. In his Quadrupeds tell it not in 

 Gath He never collected or sent me one skin from New York 

 to Louisiana along the whole of the Atlantic States. Now he 

 is clamorous for the letter press on many of the Quadrupeds 

 he has not sent me one line & and on others he has omitted 

 even the geographical range I know nothing of what he did 

 in the West having never received his journal & not twenty 

 lines on the subject. I am to write a book without the infor- 

 mation he promised to give without books of reference & 

 above all what is a sine qua non to me without specimens. In 

 the meantime my name is attached to the book, and the public 

 look to us to settle our American species, and alas I have not 

 the materials to do so. 



Now this you can do for me. I am willing to write every 

 description and every line of the book. I do it without fee or 

 reward. But 1. Books of reference or copies of them he must 

 obtain. 2. He must publish no species without my approba- 

 tion. He has made some sad mistakes already. 3. He must 

 procure such information as I shall write for. 4. He must 

 send some person say when John returns to make a tour for 

 collecting specimens through the states of the west especially. 

 I find the smaller Rodentia differing every 600 miles. Richard- 

 son's species differ from those of New York ours are once 

 more different from those of N. Y. Leib [?] found a number 

 of new species in Illinois. The New Orleans squirrels differ 

 from ours California once more new. Now on this last par- 



