½ doz best Pure Lake dowards [?] _answer_ 12/— ½ " " Carmin " " 20/— ½ " " UltraMarine " " 84/— ½ " " Vermillion " " 6/— ½ " " Terra di Verona " " 4/— As I thought the above prices enormous I have declined advising chalks for you & will await your advent.— Should you not feel inclined to go to France at present which by the bye is the very best season on account of seeing the vintage etc. etc.—please write to me so or come to town which would be still more agreeable & talk the matter over as I think I would persuade you to absent yourself for a month or so—I hope your kind lady continues quite well & your Dear Little ones— Believe me yours most sincerely JOHN J. AUDUBON. Please write by return of Post— 79 Newman Street Oxford Street. On this journey to Paris Audubon was accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Swainson and an American artist, named Parker, who had been at work on a portrait of the naturalist in oils. For Audubon it was mainly a canvassing tour; Parker hoped to obtain orders for portraits, and Swainson, new ornithological material at the great museum in the Jardin des Plantes, for a work upon which he was then engaged.[360] The party set out on the 1st of September, traveling by way of Dover and Boulogne, and reached Paris on Thursday, September 4. They alighted at the Messagerie Royale, Rue des Victoires, and, after looking up lodgings, went at once to the Jardin des Plantes to pay their respects to Cuvier. The Museum of Natural History was closed, but they knocked and asked for the Baron. "He was in," said Audubon, in the journal of his Paris experience, but, we were told, too busy to be seen. Being determined to look at the great man, we waited, knocked again, and with a certain degree of _firmness_ sent in our names. The messenger returned, bowed, and led the way up stairs, where in a minute Monsieur the Baron, like an excellent good man, came to us; he had heard of my friend Swainson and greeted him as he deserves to be greeted; he was polite and kind to me, though my name had never made its way to his ears. I looked at him, and here follows the result: age about sixty-five; size corpulent, five feet five, English measure; head large; face wrinkled and brownish; eyes gray, brilliant and sparkling; nose aquiline, large and red; mouth large, with good lips; teeth few, blunted by age, excepting one on the lower jaw, measuring nearly three-quarters of an inch square.[361] They were immediately invited to dine on the following Saturday at six o'clock, and later saw Cuvier at his home, at his Museum, and at the Academy of Sciences, over which he presided.