410 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 



As I thought the above prices enormous I have declined advising 

 chalks for you & will await your advent. 



Should you not feel inclined to go to France at present 

 which by the bye is the very best season on account of seeing 

 the vintage etc. etc. please write to me so or come to town 

 which would be still more agreeable & talk the matter over as 

 I think I would persuade you to absent yourself for a month 

 or so I hope your kind lady continues quite well & your Dear 

 Little ones 



Believe me yours most "sincerely 



JOHN J. AUDUBON. 

 Please write by return of Post 

 79 Newman Street 

 Oxford Street. 



On this journey to Paris Audubon was accompanied 

 by Mr. and Mrs. Swainson and an American artist, 

 named Parker, who had been at work on a portrait of 

 the naturalist in oils. For Audubon it was mainly a 

 canvassing tour ; Parker hoped to obtain orders for por- 

 traits, and Swainson, new ornithological material at the 

 great museum in the Jardin des Plantes, for a work 

 upon which he was then engaged. 19 



The party set out on the 1st of September, travel- 

 ing by way of Dover and Boulogne, and reached Paris 

 on Thursday, September 4. They alighted at the Mes- 

 sagerie Royale, Rue des Victoires, and, after looking 

 up lodgings, went at once to the Jardin des Plantes to 

 pay their respects to Cuvier. The Museum of Natural 

 History was closed, but they knocked and asked for the 

 Baron. "He was in," said Audubon, in the journal of 

 his Paris experience, 



18 Fauna Boreali-Americana; or the Zoology of the northern parts of 

 British America; Part Second, "The Birds;" by William Swainson and 

 John Richardson (London, 1831). 



