XXvi PROCEEDINGS—PERTHSHIRE SOCIETY OF NATURAL SCIENCE. 
wives and children—lived as one family, under one roof. Nor did 
the youngest of the three generations occupy the least important 
place in the family circle. I was particularly interested in one 
bright little girl, who had a great deal to tell me. She was much 
taken up with her doll; but when I presumed to cast such an impu¬ 
tation on her intelligence as to give to the doll the place of a living 
thing, she turned sharply round on me and said, ‘ Why, it’s only 
filled with sawdust.’ I felt I had come off second-best. I could 
read, however, in her answer one of the lessons of truth which she 
had been taught at home. 
“ The house in which Audubon lived was in keeping with the 
character of its occupants. It was plain and unpretentious, but 
wanting in nothing that was necessary to comfort. It was surrounded 
by grassy parks and natural wooding, but unadorned with parterres 
or other evidences of elaborate gardening. In the course of conver¬ 
sation with the different members of the family I got many interesting 
particulars bearing on the preparation of Audubon’s great work, 
‘The Birds of America,’ the adventurous life of the author, and 
the double disaster which befel that work. First, the destruction of 
nearly all his drawings by a rat, involving the necessity of doing the 
work of years over again; and, second, the destruction of all his 
plates by a fire in New York, after some 180 copies had been en¬ 
graved, it being, therefore, impossible to produce more copies. His 
sons, who took charge of the publication, told me that there now 
only remained three copies unsold. One copy they kept for them¬ 
selves, but that, they told me, was an expensive luxury which they 
meant to part with. I afterwards purchased the whole three copies, 
one for myself and the others for my two brothers in Paisley. One 
of these was afterwards presented to the Paisley Free Library, where 
it now is. My own copy possesses two advantages over the other 
copies. First, it is engraved on very much thicker paper; and, 
second, Mr. Victor Audubon informed me that it was the only copy 
of which the colouring had been touched up by his own hand. 
“To return to Audubon himself, the evening of life was in him 
like the soft but brilliant light of the setting sun. But, sad to say, 
when—years after the time I speak of—his sun did set, it set behind 
a cloud. After his return from his last expedition his physical health 
failed him, his eyes grew dim, and no less dim became his inward 
vision. But a bright gleam of light shone through the cloud at the 
last. The closing scene I quote from the published memoir of Mrs. 
Audubon—‘On the morning of Thursday, 27th January, 1851, when 
the end seemed approaching, and his family were around his bed, 
then, though unable to speak, his eyes, which had been so long 
nearly quenched, rekindled into their former expressive lustre and 
beauty, as if his soul were conscious that it neared the shore of the 
Eternal Land, and the dying Audubon stretched out his arms, 
pressed his wife and children’s hands with his own, and peacefully 
passed into his rest.’ ” 
“Perth, October, 1893.” 
John James Audubon was born near New Orleans, in the State 
