In many instances towards the end of his work, Audubon furnished Havell with drawings of the birds only, with directions to supply "an old rotten stick" for perch, or to "amend this rascally sky and water"; as we have already seen, he often depended upon him to combine several detached pictures into one plate, but not always with happy results. The following note was written on a drawing of the Carolina Parrot, reproduced in a very striking plate (No. xxvi), in which seven gaudy individuals of this nearly extinct species are represented feeding on a favorite weed, the cockle-bur: "The upper specimen was shot near Bayou Sarah, and appeared as very uncommon having 14 Tail feathers all very distinct—uniformly affixed in 14 distinct receptacles that I drew it more to exhibit one of those astonishing fits of nature than anything else—it was a female.—The Green headed is also a Singular although not so uncommon a variety as the above one. Louisiana—December (1821?) J. J. Audubon." The upper bird, which is here referred to, is noticed in his "Biography" of the species as "a kind of occasional variety." On the drawing of the Swamp Sparrow (Plate lxiv), which was published in 1829, Audubon wrote, evidently with the wish of having his wife's name appear: "Drawn from Nature by Lucy Audubon, Mr. Havell will please have Lucy Audubon name on this plate instead of mine...!" Vandalism is always short-sighted, but seldom has its vision been more myopic and sinister than in the case of the copper plates of _The Birds of America_, most of which were sold for old metal and converted into copper bars. Had they been preserved to this day, their value would have been an hundred-fold greater than that of the few paltry tons of metallic copper which they were supposed to represent. Mr. Ruthven Deane, whose researches in the field of "Auduboniana" have added greatly to this subject, has given a history of these plates,[247] and of the interesting way in which a remnant came to be snatched, as it were, from the very mouth of the furnace, through the persistence and enthusiasm of a lad of fourteen. To follow this writer's account, it seems that shortly after the death of her son John, Mrs. Audubon sold the copper plates to a firm in New York, where they remained until about 1865, stored in the warehouse of Messrs. Phelps, Dodge & Company. Not far from that time the plates were sorted and a few were given away; the large remainder was sent to a brass and copper company, of which William E. Dodge was president, at Ansonia, Connecticut. How some of these were fortunately rescued, in about the year 1873, is told in a letter to Mr. Deane from Mr. Charles A. Cowles, of Ansonia: