308 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 



ceived no encouragement. This sort of treatment was evidently 

 what I needed, for I hastened back to the works in a state of 

 mind so determined that I succeeded in having all the plates, 

 that had not been melted, removed to a place of safety. This 

 occurred in the spring of that year; and the plates remained 

 undisturbed until the annual inventory was taken the first of 

 the following year. At that time the disposition of the plates 

 was taken up. I appealed to my mother and interested her 

 to such an extent that she drove to the factory and looked at 

 one of the plates. She of course recognized that they were 

 Audubon plates ; and instructions were given by my father to 

 keep them intact. The plates were subsequently submitted 

 to a treatment which removed all oxidation and then taken to 

 the main office of the company, and to the best of my recollec- 

 tion, distributed as follows: Mr. Wm. E. Dodge, president of 

 the company, had a few plates sent to the American Museum 

 of Natural History, New York City, and a few plates to the 

 Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C, and I think he 

 retained one or two for himself. The remainder of them, with 

 the exception of two, my father kept ; and they have since come 

 into my possession by purchase from the estate. The two 

 plates just excepted were Nos. xxii and Ixxxii [Purple Martin 

 and Whippoorwill], and they particularly struck my fancy, 

 so much that when the plates were first discovered I managed to 

 secure them on the quiet, cleaned them myself and hid them; 

 and when the plates were distributed no one knew of the exist- 

 ence of these two and they later became my property. 



It was thought possible that some of these plates had 

 been sold in New York City before the bulk of them 

 were condemned as junk and sent to Connecticut, but in 

 1898 Mr. Deane was able to give the designation and 

 resting place of only thirty-seven ; ^° among these, how- 



™At that time the American Museum of Natural History, New York, 

 possessed nine; the Smithsonian Institution, six; Princeton University, four; 

 Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, one, while the remainder 

 were in private hands. 



