4 
124 JOHN JAMES AUDUBON 
octavo volumes. Five hundred dollars is 
the average price which this work brings. 
This was a copy of the original English 
publication, with the figures reduced and 
lithographed. In this work, his sons, 
John and Victor, greatly assisted him, 
the former doing the reducing by the 
aid of the camera-lucida, and the latter 
attending to the printing and publishing. 
The first volume of this work appeared 
in 1840, and the last in 1844. 
Audubon experimented a long time 
before he hit upon a satisfactory method 
of drawing his birds. Early in his 
studies he merely drew them in out- 
line. Then he practised using threads 
to raise the head, wing or tail of his 
specimen. Under David he had learned 
to draw the human figure from a mani- 
kin. It now occurred to him to make 
a manikin of a bird, using cork or wood, 
or wires for the purpose. But his bird 
manikin only excited the laughter and 
ridicule of his friends. Then he con- 
