AUDUBON'S GREATEST TRIUMPH 203 



v 



The proprietor of a well known Philadelphia book- 

 shop 22 has stated that during his experience as an anti- 

 quary, he has had personal knowledge of forty or fifty 

 copies of the folio edition of Audubon's Birds in Amer- 

 ica, and he thought it probable that a single New Eng- 

 land print dealer, in the course of twenty years, had 

 broken up thirty or forty volumes for the purpose of 

 selling the plates. This is not surprising, since from 

 the sale of a single volume upwards of $1,500 might be 

 realized in this way, but no reputable dealer would now 

 think of breaking up an unimpaired set. 



Mr. Ruthven Deane, who has compiled a careful rec- 

 ord of copies of The Birds of America known to exist 

 in the United States, recorded in 1908 that he had ascer- 

 tained the resting-place of seventy-five sets which, with 

 few exceptions, were complete and in good condition. 

 "A set in the library of the Mechanics-Mercantile Insti- 

 tute, San Francisco, California, which had been there 

 for some thirty years, and another set in the San Fran- 

 cisco Art Association, presented in 1894 by Mr. Edward 

 F. Searles, Methuen, Massachusetts, were both de- 

 stroyed by the disastrous earthquake and fire which vis- 

 ited that city April 18, 1906." 23 



Audubon's own copy of his Birds, the plates of which 

 were naturally selected with the greatest care, was sold by 

 Mrs. Audubon after the death of her last surviving son, 

 in 1862, to John T. Johnson, of New York, for $1,200; 

 the subsequent history of these volumes has not been 

 traced. Havell brought with him to America a copy, 

 every plate of which is said to have been selected by 

 himself, and it is undoubtedly one of the finest sets in 

 existence. It passed from the family's possession to the 



22 See Rhoads (Bibl. No. 231), loc. cit. 



23 Ruthven Deane (Bibl. No. 225), The Auk, vol. xxv, p. 401 (1908). 



