x AUDUBON THE NATURALIST 
press my gratitude to Professor Laubscher for his able co- 
operation in securing transcriptions and photographs, and to 
Monsieur Lavigne for his kind permission to use them, as well 
as for his careful response to numerous questions which arose 
in the course of the investigation. 
In dealing with letters and documents, of whatever kind, 
in manuscript, I have made it my invariable rule to reproduce 
the form and substance of the record as it exists as exactly 
as possible; in translations, however, no attempt has been 
made to preserve any minor idiosyncrasies of the writer. The 
source of all scientific, literary or historical material previously 
published is indicated in footnotes, and the reader will find 
copious references to hitherto unpublished documents, which 
in their complete and original form, with or without transla- 
tions, together with an annotated Bibliography, have been 
gathered in Appendices at the end of Volume II. For con- 
venience of reference each chapter has been treated as a unit 
so far as the footnotes are concerned, and the quoted author’s 
name, with the title of his work in addition to the bibliographic 
number, has been given in nearly every instance. 
Besides the many coadjutors whose friendly aid has been 
gladly acknowledged in the body of this work, I now wish to 
offer my sincere thanks, in particular, to the Misses Maria 
R. and Florence Audubon, granddaughters of the naturalist, 
who have shown me many courtesies, and to the Hon. Myron 
T. Herrick, late American Ambassador to France, for his 
kindly assistance in obtaining documentary transcripts from 
the Department of the Marine at Paris. I am under special 
obligations also to the librarians of the British Museum and Ox- 
ford University, the Linnean and Zodlogical Societies of Lon- 
don, the Jardin des Plantes at Paris, the Public Libraries of 
Boston and New York, and the libraries of the Historical So- 
cieties of New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Louisiana, as 
well as to the Director of the Museum of Comparative Zodlogy 
of Harvard University, and to the American Museum of 
Natural History in New York City, for photographs of paint- 
ings and other objects, for permission to read or copy manu- 
