DEBUT AS A NATURALIST 331 



of the figures in Bonaparte's concluding volumes were 

 by the hand of a German named Alexander Rider. It 

 was doubtless a fortunate circumstance that the preju- 

 dice and obstinacy of this overbearing Scot was a bar 

 to any further absorption of Audubon's talents. 7 



Audubon met at this time a more appreciative en- 

 graver in Mr. Fairman, who urged him to take his draw- 

 ings to Europe and have them engraved in a superior 

 style; on July 12 the naturalist wrote that he had drawn 

 "for Mr. Fairman a small grouse to be put on a bank- 

 note belonging to the State of New Jersey." By some 

 lucky chance this incident brought him the acquaintance 

 of Edward Harris, 8 whom he met that summer in Phila- 

 delphia, and who became one of his most constant and 

 disinterested friends. It was Harris who a few days 

 after their meeting took all of the drawings which Au- 

 dubon had for sale and at the artist's own prices ; 9 who 

 for years was continually sending him rare or desirable 

 specimens of birds; who accompanied him through the 

 Southern States to Florida in 1837 and on the famous 



7 He seems, however, to have supplied Bonaparte liberally with notes, 

 for after devoting fifteen pages to the biography of the Wild Turkey, 

 Audubon said: "A long account of this remarkable bird has already 

 been given in Bonaparte's American Ornithology, volume I. As that 

 account was in a great measure derived from notes furnished by myself, 

 you need not be surprised, good reader, to find it often in accordance 

 with the above." Ornithological Biography (Bibl. No. 2), vol. i, p. 16. 



Edward Harris was born at Morristown, New Jersey, in 1799, where 

 he died in 1863. Without the incentive to earn money or the ambition 

 to acquire fame, he lived the life of a gentleman of leisure, devoted to 

 natural history, to sport and to the cultivation of his paternal acres. He 

 had the gift of friendship, was widely traveled, wrote charming letters, 

 and kept careful records of his observations, but rarely published any- 

 thing. The breeding of fine stock was one of his hobbies, and as a 

 result of a journey to Europe in 1839, when he visited a horse fair in 

 Normandy, he is credited with having first introduced the Norman breed 

 into America. "The beneficent results of his quiet, unobtrusive life," says 

 an appreciative biographer, "reach down to our time, and, after half a 

 century, we are glad that Edward Harris lived." See biographical sketch 

 by George Spencer Morris, in Cassinia, vol. vi (Philadelphia, 1902). 



See Chapter XII, p. 179. 



