Page:John James Audubon (Burroughs).djvu/156

124 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 outline. 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 manikin. 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