and every friend and believe me ever your most truly and sincerely attached friend, JOHN J. AUDUBON. TO EDWARD HARRIS, Esqre. Addressed, care "Messrs. Rathbone, Brothers & Co. Liverpool." When you send to Liverpool. If Townsend has brought Birds Eggs, ask him to send them me. I will return all to him that he may want. I greatly regret that you did not find me the _water_ Birds of which you speak, as I might have perchance found something new or curious among them. The Golden Eye Duck especially, if any be had? In reference to the new species of birds which had come into his hands, Audubon said: What was I to do? Why, to publish them, to be sure; for this I should have done, to the best of my power, even if every subscriber in Europe had refused to take them. What! said I, shall the last volume of the "Birds of America" be now closed, at a time when new species are in my hands? No! And in spite of threats from this quarter and that, that such and such persons would discontinue their subscriptions (which indeed they have done), and refuse to take the few numbers that would have rendered their copies complete, my wish to do all that was in my power has been accomplished. Doubtless we should hesitate to blame many of Audubon's subscribers for wishing to be relieved from an obligation which for a period of ten years had cost them from $50 to $100 per annum, not to speak of any who had met financial disaster in the panic of that day, but at this juncture he really had no choice. When his eightieth Number, originally intended to be the last, appeared in 1837, many important kinds of birds, including ducks, swan, tern, and the Flamingo, as well as grouse, warblers and woodpeckers, were still calling loud for recognition. So generous of space had he been in the earlier phase of his undertaking that twenty species were each shown on two distinct plates, while in the end the need of compression compelled him to introduce thirty-five composite plates. Subscribers to _The Birds of America_ at the beginning had been permitted to take a part or the whole, and many incomplete sets were circulated, upwards of 120, as Audubon declared in 1839, having then discontinued their subscriptions. Towards the end of his undertaking, owing to the great expense and uncertainty involved, he was disinclined to supply any but regular subscribers, as shown by the following letter written from London, May 25, 1838, to William A. Colman of New York:[148]