Having told the story of the way in which these unique and important records came into my possession, I wish to express my gratitude to Professor Laubscher for his able cooperation in securing transcriptions and photographs, and to Monsieur Lavigne for his kind permission to use them, as well as for his careful response to numerous questions which arose in the course of the investigation. In dealing with letters and documents, of whatever kind, in manuscript, I have made it my invariable rule to reproduce the form and substance of the record as it exists as exactly as possible; in translations, however, no attempt has been made to preserve any minor idiosyncrasies of the writer. The source of all scientific, literary or historical material previously published is indicated in footnotes, and the reader will find copious references to hitherto unpublished documents, which in their complete and original form, with or without translations, together with an annotated Bibliography, have been gathered in Appendices at the end of Volume II. For convenience of reference each chapter has been treated as a unit so far as the footnotes are concerned, and the quoted author's name, with the title of his work in addition to the bibliographic number, has been given in nearly every instance. Besides the many coadjutors whose friendly aid has been gladly acknowledged in the body of this work, I now wish to offer my sincere thanks, in particular, to the Misses Maria R. and Florence Audubon, granddaughters of the naturalist, who have shown me many courtesies, and to the Hon. Myron T. Herrick, late American Ambassador to France, for his kindly assistance in obtaining documentary transcripts from the Department of the Marine at Paris. I am under special obligations also to the librarians of the British Museum and Oxford University, the Linnæan and Zoölogical Societies of London, the Jardin des Plantes at Paris, the Public Libraries of Boston and New York, and the libraries of the Historical Societies of New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Louisiana, as well as to the Director of the Museum of Comparative Zoölogy of Harvard University, and to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, for photographs of paintings and other objects, for permission to read or copy manuscripts, and for favors of various sorts. Furthermore, I am indebted to the good offices of Mr. Ferdinand Lathrop Mayer, Secretary of Legation, Port-au-Prince, and of M. Fontaine, American Consular Agent at Les Cayes, Haiti, for a series of photographs made expressly to represent Les Cayes as it appears today. I would also acknowledge the courtesy of the Corporation of Trinity Parish, New York, through Mr. Pendleton Dudley, for an excellent photograph of the Audubon Monument.