INTRODUCTION 3 
Having reaped the fruits of the Revolution, it was 
enjoying peace under the Restoration; moreover, it 
was taking a leading part in the advancement of natu- 
ral science, of which Cuvier was the acknowledged dean. 
It was but a year before the death of blind and aged 
Lamarck, neglected and forgotten then, but destined 
after the lapse of three-quarters of a century to have a 
monument raised to his memory by contributions from 
every part of Europe and America, and to be recog- 
nized as the first great evolutionist of the modern school. 
Audubon had not seen his ancestral capital for up- 
wards of thirty years, not since as a young man he was 
sent from his father’s home near Nantes to study draw- 
ing in the studio of David, at the Louvre. Though in 
the land of his fathers and speaking his native tongue, 
his visit was tinged with disappointment. At the age 
of forty-three he was engaged in an enterprise which 
stands unique in the annals of science and literature. 
But fifty plates, or ten numbers, of his incomparable 
series had been engraved, and this work had then but 
thirty subscribers. That he was bound to sink or swim 
he knew full well. On August 30 he wrote: “My 
subscribers are yet far from enough to pay my ex- 
penses, and my purse suffers severely from want of 
greater patronage.” This want he had hoped to satisfy 
in France, but after an experience of eight weeks, and 
an expenditure, as he records, of forty pounds, he was 
obliged to leave Paris with only thirteen additional 
names on his list. Yet among the latter, it should be 
noticed, were those of George Cuvier, the Duke of Or- 
leans and King Charles X, while six copies had been 
ordered by the Minister of the Interior for distribution 
among the more important libraries of Paris. More- 
over, he had won the friendship and encomiums of 
