74 CONSERVATOR OF SURGEONS’ MUSEUM [ch. iv. 
In the same preface Audubon refers in touching 
terms to his approaching final departure from 
Edinburgh, as to which he writes: “ What 
beautiful walks around that superlatively beautiful 
city. The oftener I have rambled along them 
the more I have thought with deep regret that now 
at last I am bidding these walks, and the friends 
whom I know and possess there, a last adieu.” So 
he left this country never to return; and when he 
was about to settle down on a beautiful spot 
acquired by him as his permanent home in the 
neighbourhood of New York, which he named 
Minniesland, he said, after a short experience of 
a city residence in New York, “I could not live 
in any city, except, perhaps, the beautiful Edin¬ 
burgh,” thus showing that he continued to retain 
pleasant memories connected with his life and his 
work there. 
Although Audubon’s work undoubtedly owes 
much to the “bone and sinew” contributed to it 
by MacGillivray, it is also clear, I think, that 
the gain by the arrangement between the two 
naturalists was not all on one side; and on 
merely glancing through MacGillivray’s History of 
British Birds (the first three volumes of which 
were published almost concurrently with the 
later volumes of the Ornithological Biographies , 
viz., in 1837-39 and 1840 respectively), it will 
appear evident that he was considerably in¬ 
debted in the preparation of that book to the 
information and experience gained by him through 
