298 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 



pranks is thus guardedly referred to by the senior Audu- 

 bon when writing at American Harbor, on the coast of 

 Labrador, June 25, 1833 : 10 "The young men, who 

 are always ready for sport, caught a hundred codfish in 

 half an hour, and somewhere secured three fine salmon, 

 one of which was sent to the 'Gulnare' with some cod." 

 Whether the fishermen at American Harbor, who had 

 obstinately refused to sell, ever missed those fine salmon 

 from their pounds, is not recorded. Another adventure 

 has been related by Mr. Fraser, 11 whose family was 

 on intimate terms with the Audubons and MacGilli- 

 vrays at Edinburgh, when John Audubon, John Mac- 

 Gillivray (William MacGillivray's eldest son) , and him- 

 self were caught in the Ravelston woods while shooting 

 birds; the boys, he said "were rather roughly handled," 

 but got off by giving up their guns. 



Under his father's tuition John Audubon became 

 an observant and self-reliant collector in the field, and 

 an animal painter and draughtsman of no mean powers. 

 At twenty-one, as we have seen, he accompanied his 

 father's expedition to Labrador, was with him and Har- 

 ris in Florida and Texas in 1837, made successive visits 

 to England, and traveled again in Texas and in Mexico, 

 all in the interests of his father's works. He painted 

 nearly one-half of the large plates of the Quadrupeds 

 of North America, besides reducing all the drawings for 

 the smaller editions of the Birds and Quadrupeds, an 

 enormous labor in itself, representing the redrawing, 

 with numerous alterations, of 655 elaborate octavo 

 plates. After his return from California in 1850, he 

 began to bring out an account of his western travels, 



10 Maria R. Audubon, Audubon and his Journals (Bibl. No. 86), vol. i, 

 p. 380. 



"See William MacGillivray, A Memorial Tribute to William Mac- 

 Gillivray (Bibl. No. 211), p. 40. 



