AUDUBON AND MACGILLIVRAY 141 



undergo sure and certain relief. I took to Drawing! and what 

 do you think I have positively finished 33 drawings of Ameri- 

 can birds in England. This has enabled me to swell my 3 d. vol. 

 of Illustrations with 57 species not given by Wilson and there- 

 fore forestalling my friend Charles Bonaparte. 



On the 28th of April Audubon wrote to Edward 

 Harris, begging him to send specimens of certain birds 

 which he needed, as well as a circumstantial account of 

 the shad fisheries of the Delaware River as material for 

 an "Episode" for the third volume of his Biography; 

 the fiftieth number of his illustrations was then in the 

 hands of the colorist. He continued: n 



I thought better to push my publication on account of the 

 woeful dulling of the times in this country, where political 

 strife engrosses the mind of every person so much that arts and 

 sciences are, as it were, put on the shelves. Ministers are beings 

 of six weeks lives now-a-days. The Reformers are struggling 

 against the Tories, and vice versa. The Churchmen are aghast 

 at the prospect of the future, and all this puts a complete stop- 

 page to business, independent of such matters. Even since my 

 return to England I have obtained only two or three subscrib- 

 ers, and have lost more than a dozen ; nay, I may safely say, 

 two dozen. In America, on the contrary, things appear to go 

 on more prosperously. May God's will grant a long continua- 

 tion of this to our only Land of Liberty. France, you will have 

 heard, has at last passed an order for the payment of her debts 

 to the citizens of the United States, and I hope that Ihis may 

 prove amply sufficient to save us from having a war with that 

 powerful nation. ... I wrote you that Dr. George Parkman, 

 of Boston, would have my 2 d. volume of Biographies reprinted 

 in his city. I have seen 100 pages of this reprint here, but do 

 not know if the Vol. (American Ed.) has appeared before the 

 Public? 



II This and extracts from letters which follow are from the Jeanes MSS. 



