While at Manchester Audubon was driven to the town of Bakewell, "the spot," he wrote in deference to his wife, "which has been honored with thy ancestor's name." Shortly after, on October 23, he started by stage for Edinburgh, and the distance of 212 miles was covered in three days; the fare was £5 5s. 5d., which he regarded as exorbitant, but he complained not so much of the charge as of the beggarly manner of the drivers, who never hesitated to open the door of their coach and ask for a shilling at the slightest provocation. At Edinburgh Audubon was welcomed so warmly that he began to feel that ultimate success was at last within his reach. Professor Robert Jameson of the University did much to make his work known, and invited him to coöperate in an enterprise upon which he was then engaged;[327] this was pronounced by Dr. Knox of the Medical School to be a "job book," but whatever its merits may have been, Audubon decided after due reflection to stand on his own feet. Not long after reaching the Scottish capital, Audubon made the acquaintance of Mr. W. Home Lizars, styled "a Mr. Lizard" by a snapshot biographer of a later day, a well known, expert engraver and painter, who engaged in various publishing enterprises. When Audubon had held up a few of his drawings for his inspection, Lizars rose, exclaiming: "My God! I never saw anything like this before." The picture of the Mockingbirds attacked by a rattlesnake particularly struck his fancy, but when he came to the drawing of the Great-footed Hawks, "with bloody rags at their beaks' ends, and cruel delight in their daring eyes," Lizars declared that he would both engrave and publish it. "Mr. Audubon," said he, "the people here don't know who you are at all, but depend upon it, they _shall_ know." Lizars eventually agreed to engrave and bring out the first specimen number of _The Birds of America_, and about the 10th of November made a beginning with the first plate. On November 28, 1826, he handed Audubon a first proof of the Wild Turkey Cock, a subject chosen to justify the great size of the work, which was to be in double elephant folio, and which in point of size is perhaps to this day the largest extended publication in existence.[328] This and the second plate, which represented the Yellow-billed Cuckoo[329] in the act of seizing a tiger swallowtail butterfly on a branch of the paw-paw tree, were finished by December 10; the first number of five plates was ready some weeks later. Lizars engraved at Edinburgh the first ten of Audubon's plates, but most of these were subsequently retouched, colored and reissued by his successor in London, as will presently appear. [Illustration: PLATE I _Wild Turkey_ MELEAGRIS GALLOPAVO. Linn. _Male._ _American Cane. Miegia macrosperma._ Drawn from nature by J. J. Audubon F.R.S.F.L.S. Engraved by W. H. Lizars Edinr. Retouched by R. Havell Junr.]