Ord, who was about Audubon's own age, was a quiet, persistent, and unassuming worker, held in high esteem by many of his associates. Audubon seems to have done his best to conciliate him then and at a later day, but all to no purpose; Dr. Harlan once advised him to give up the attempt, since Ord, he declared, had no heart for friendship, having been denied that blessing by nature herself. Ord, as we have seen, had edited the eighth and written the ninth, or concluding, volume of Wilson's _American Ornithology_, as well as a life of its author; the appearance of a new star in the ornithological horizon may not have been a welcome sight. At all events, we soon find him engaged upon a new edition of Wilson's work.[300] Ord had objected to Audubon's method of combining plants and other accessories with his drawings of birds, a criticism that in the case of purely technical works could be easily sustained, and some of his later charges, though carried too far, were not wholly without foundation.[301] Bonaparte,[302] on the other hand, was captivated by Audubon's drawings and anxious to secure his services for his own work, then well in hand. This was the _American Ornithology_, for which Titian R. Peale was then making the drawings, and Thomas Lawson, who had been Wilson's engraver, was engaged on the plates; though quite distinct in itself, this was much in the style of Wilson's earlier work, of which it was virtually a continuation. When Bonaparte introduced Audubon to these men, it is not surprising that the meeting was not productive of the best of feeling on either side. Peale's stiff and rather conventional portraits of birds naturally failed to awaken enthusiasm in "the trader naturalist," as some who looked upon him as a rival rather contemptuously called him. The interview with Lawson, if correctly reported by his friend,[303] shows that his interest could not have been of the most disinterested sort. "Lawson told me," said this reporter, "that he spoke freely of the pictures, and said that they were ill drawn, not true to nature, and anatomically incorrect." Thereupon Bonaparte defended them warmly, saying that he would buy them and that Lawson should engrave them. "You may buy them," said the Scotchman, "but I will not engrave them ... because ornithology requires truth in the forms, and correctness in the lines. Here are neither." Other meetings are said to have followed, but to have ended only in mutual dislike. Nevertheless, one of Audubon's drawings was engraved by Lawson and appeared in Bonaparte's work,[304] but most of the figures in Bonaparte's concluding volumes were by the hand of a German named Alexander Rider. It was doubtless a fortunate circumstance that the prejudice and obstinacy of this overbearing Scot was a bar to any further absorption of Audubon's talents.[305]