156 PIONEERS QF SCIENCE IN AMERICA. 



again, he left business to his partner, and occupied himself 

 with natural history and his drawings. 



In 1810 he was visited at his store by Alexander Wilson, 

 who came to solicit subscriptions to his Ornithology. He was 

 about to sign the list, when his partner suggested to him, in 

 French, that he could make better drawings than Wilson, and 

 probably knew as much about American birds as he. Wilson 

 understood the remark, and asked Audubon if he had any 

 drawings of birds. Audubon exhibited what he had, and, to 

 Wilson's question if he intended to publish his work, replied 

 that he had never thought of it. The two naturalists seem 

 to have spent some time together. Audubon, it is stated, ex- 

 plored the woods with Wilson, lent him his drawings, and aided 

 him in various ways ; although Wilson entered in his notes 

 against Louisville that " science or literature had not one friend 

 in the place." 



As might be expected, the business at Louisville was not 

 prosperous. After four years, marked by two removals to se- 

 cure better success, the partnership was dissolved, and Au- 

 dubon removed to Henderson, Kentucky, in 1812. Another 

 business adventure, entered into* with his brother-in-law in 

 New Orleans, failed. Only natural history prospered with 

 him. A very large proportion of his work in this line, which 

 bore so noble and so abundant fruit in later years, was done 

 during his residence in Henderson. Aiming to represent the 

 birds which he drew in position as far as possible, he adopted 

 ingenious devices to secure correct views of them as they 

 looked in Nature. Those which he had to shoot he would 

 afterward set up and support in natural attitudes, while he 

 painted them ; others he would view, with their actual sur- 

 roundings, through a telescope. Audubon's father died about 

 1812, leaving to him the estate in France and seventeen thou- 

 sand dollars, which had been deposited with a merchant in 

 Richmond, Virginia. "Audubon, however, took no steps to 

 obtain possession of his estate in France, and in after-years, 

 when his sons had grown up, sent one of them to France for 

 the purpose of legally transferring the property to his own 

 sister Rosa." Before Audubon was able to obtain the money 

 from the merchant in Richmond, the latter died insolvent ; and 

 so no benefit accrued to the naturalist from either part of his 

 legacy. 



