William MacGillivray was a man of the finest character and an honor to the best traditions of British scholarship; in his enthusiasm and indefatigable energy he was fully a match to Audubon. For nearly twelve years (1841-1852) he was an honored lecturer and professor in Marischal College and University, Aberdeen, where he died, probably as a result of overwork in the field, in 1852, thus outliving his older friend but one year. His last completed work, _Natural History of Deeside and Braemar_, was published under the patronage of Queen Victoria and by her command privately printed, under the editorship of E. Lancaster, in 1855. MacGillivray's surviving son, whose career as a field naturalist was also cut short by too strenuous work, accompanied Huxley, then an assistant surgeon in the Royal Navy, on the memorable voyage of the _Rattlesnake_ under Captain Owen Stanley in 1842. MacGillivray was honored when alive, and though dead has not been forgotten; in 1890 a beautiful tablet was dedicated to him in Aberdeen, and at the same time a worthy monument was raised to his memory at Edinburgh.[126] In authorship the public is mainly interested in seeing merit duly acknowledged. Said Audubon, in the introductory address to his first volume: There are persons whose desire of obtaining celebrity induces them to suppress the knowledge of the assistance which they have received in the composition of their works. In many cases, in fact, the real author of the drawings or the descriptions in books on Natural History is not so much as mentioned, while the pretended author assumes to himself all the merit which the world is willing to allow him. This want of candour I could never endure. On the contrary, I feel pleasure in here acknowledging the assistance which I have received from a friend, Mr. William MacGillivray, who being possessed of a liberal education and a strong taste for the study of the Natural Sciences, has aided me, not in drawing the figures of my Illustrations, nor in writing the book now in your hand, although fully competent for both tasks, but in completing the scientific details, and in smoothing down the asperities of my Ornithological Biographies. In the introduction to Volume IV he added that the anatomical descriptions, as well as the sketches by which they are sometimes illustrated, have been executed by my learned friend, William MacGillivray, who in the most agreeable manner consented to undertake the labour, by no means small, of such a task, and to whom those who are interested in the progress of Ornithological science, as well as myself, must therefore feel indebted.