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694 five folio plates each, the whole to be included in four volumes, and to be sold for one thousand dollars a copy. The entire cost of the work would exceed one hundred thousand dollars; yet when the prospectus was published he had not money enough to pay for getting out the first number. With the aid of Sir Thomas Lawrence he sold some pictures, and was enabled to carry himself over this difficulty; and this led the way to his finding a regular means of support while his enterprise was going on, by painting. He visited Paris in 1828, canvassing for subscribers, and experienced an admiration from illustrious men parallel with that which had greeted him in England. But he does not appear to have appreciated the money value of this admiration as highly as what he found in England, for he wrote: "France is poor indeed! This day I have attended the Royal Academy of Sciences, and had my plates examined by about one hundred persons. 'Fine, very fine,' issued from many mouths; but they said, also, 'What a work! what a price! who can pay it?' I recollected that I had thirty subscribers at Manchester, and mentioned it. They stared and seemed surprised; but acknowledged that England, the little island of England, alone was able to support poor Audubon. ... Now it is that I plainly see how happy, or lucky, it was in me not to have come to France first; for if I had, my work now would not have had even a beginning. It would have perished like a flower in October; and I should have returned to my woods, without the hope of leaving behind that eternal fame which my ambition, industry, and perseverance long to enjoy." Baron Cuvier was requested by the Academy of Sciences to make a verbal report on Audubon's "Birds," and he responded, describing the work "as the most magnificent monument which has yet been erected to ornithology." The author, having returned to his own country after his schooling in France, "thought he could not make a better use of his talents than by representing the most brilliant productions of that hemisphere. The accurate observation necessary for such representations as he wished to make soon rendered him a naturalist. ... Formerly the European naturalists were obliged to make known to America the riches she possessed; but now Mitchell, Harler, and Bonaparte give back with interest to Europe what America had received. Wilson's history of the 'Birds of the United States' equals in elegance our most beautiful works on ornithology. If that of Mr. Audubon should be completed, we shall be obliged to acknowledge that America, in magnificence of execution, has surpassed the Old World." After spending the winter in London, Audubon returned to the United States in April, 1829, and made his way, interrupted by excursions in quest of birds, to Little Egg Harbor, New Jersey, and the "Great Pine Swamp" in Northumberland County, Pennsylvania, to his home in Louisiana, which he reached in November. His book, in the mean time, was going steadily on, and the first volume was published in London in 1830. It