Coues : “ Behind the Veil: 
199 
of various pieces of paper peer curious faces of Owls, in all stages of 
incompleteness, showing how he practised drawing these difficult 
subjects. 
Wilson’s school-house, near gray’s ferry, Philadelphia. 
From a drawing by M. S. Weaver, Oct. 22, 1841, received by Elliott Coues, February, 1879, 
from Malvina Lawson, daughter of Alexander Lawson, Wilson’s engraver. See article in the 
“ Penn Monthly,” June, 1879, p. 443. The drawing was first engraved on wood, and published 
by Thomas Meehan, in the “ Gardener’s Monthly,” August, 1880, p. 248. The present impres- 
sion is from an electrotype of that wood-cut. The size of the original is 5.10 X 3.95 inches. 
Quite a different “ presence ” seemed about me as I turned from 
these precious relics to the no less valuable and interesting collec- 
tion of Audubon letters and drawings. The correspondence — 
much if not all of it inedited — in Mr. Wade’s possession is volumi- 
nous, and supplies many missing links in the inside history of the 
ever-splendid “ Birds of America.” The marvellous genius of Audu- 
bon, with its grand achievements, could not but excite envy and set 
slander abroad in some quarters. The documents, of course, are 
mainly on the side of the author, and some of them show certain 
high names in no favorable light. There are some unpublished de- 
fences of Audubon from the attacks of “the eccentric Waterton ” ; 
some matters which no friend of George Ord (Wilson’s editor, it will 
