Bachman, who paid a long visit to the Audubons in the late summer or early autumn of 1845, said that while he was at "Minnie's Land," Audubon painted "Le Conte's Pine Mouse" with his usual facility and skill, but he detected a change in his mental powers. For a long time Bachman had complained of the want of books, which the younger Audubons failed to supply, and of lack of specimens, which no doubt their father wished to retain for use in his own studies, until at length his patience was gone and he tried another form of appeal. The following letter[206] to their mutual friend, Edward Harris, shows that he was then determined to throw up the responsibility which had been assumed in the _Quadrupeds_ unless what he regarded as "reasonable requests" were complied with forthwith: _John Bachman to Edward Harris_ CHARLESTON, _Decem. 24_, 1845. Friend Harris, you can be of service to me, to the Audubons & the cause of science. I will tell you how. I find the Audubons are not aware of what is wanted in the publication of the Quadrupeds. All they care about is to get out a No. of engravings in two months. They have not sent me one single book out of a list of 100 I gave them and only 6 lines copied from a book after having written for them for 4 years. When he published his birds he collected hundreds of thousands of specimens. In his Quadrupeds—tell it not in Gath—He never collected or sent me one skin from New York to Louisiana along the whole of the Atlantic States. Now he is clamorous for the letter press—on many of the Quadrupeds he has not sent me one line & and on others he has omitted even the geographical range—I know nothing of what he did in the West having never received his journal & not twenty lines on the subject. I am to write a book without the information he promised to give—without books of reference & above all what is a sine qua non to me without specimens. In the meantime my name is attached to the book, and the public look to us to settle our American species, and alas I have not the materials to do so.