70 JOHN JAMES AUDUBON 
“Pah! it is all a hoax; save your 
shilling for better use. I have seen 
them ; the fellow ought to be drummed 
out of town.’’ 
In 1827, in Edinburgh, he seems to 
have issued a prospectus for his work, 
and to have opened books of subscrip- 
tion, and now a publisher, Mr. Lizars, 
offers to bring out the first number of 
‘‘Birds of America,’ and on Novem- 
ber 28, the first proof of the first engrav- 
ing was shown him, and he was pleased 
with it. 
With a specimen number he proposed 
to travel about the country in quest of 
subscribers until he had secured three 
hundred. In his journal under date of 
December 10, he says: ‘‘My success 
in Edinburgh borders on the miraculous. 
My book is to be published in numbers 
containing four [in another place he 
says five] birds in each, the size of life, 
in a style surpassing anything now ex- 
isting, at two guineas a number. The 
