Honest John Bachman, who had lived and worked with Audubon for months at a time, and who probably knew him better than did any one in America outside of the naturalist's own family, gave this account of his habits in 1834, when, at the age of forty-nine, he was still working at his best: He rises at the earliest dawn, and devotes the whole of the day, in intense industry, to his favourite pursuit. The specimens from which he makes his drawings are all from nature; carefully noting the colors of the eye, bill, and legs; measuring, with great accuracy, every part of the bird. When differences exist, either in the sexes or young, several figures are given on the same plate; sparing no labour in retouching old drawings or in making new ones, in all cases where he conceives there may be a possibility of making an improvement. In this way, he has already succeeded in figuring nearly the whole of the birds necessary to complete his splendid and important work. He keeps a journal, and regularly notes down every thing connected with natural history. This journal is always kept in English: a language which, it must be acknowledged he writes very correctly, when it is taken into consideration that he spent nearly the first seventeen years of his life in France. Besides this, he keeps separate journals, in which he notes every thing that he learns each day on the habits of every bird. In all his travels, he carries these journals with him; and he never suffers business, fatigue, or pleasure to prevent him each evening from noting down every interesting observation. In this way, a mass of information has been accumulated from year to year. When he sits down to write the history of a bird (which is usually in the evening), he first reads over all the memoranda which he has made with regard to its habits and he is generally able to write an interesting paper on the subject in the course of an evening. At some leisure moment this is again revised and corrected: the scientific details he leaves to the last. Early in March, 1834, Audubon left his friends in Charleston, and with his wife and son passed northward to Washington and Baltimore. From the latter city, on March 9, he wrote to Edward Harris, in part as follows: Friends such as you _have been_, and _are_ still, are the only recompense such poor individuals such as I am can enjoy in this world, and the more valued as they are so very rare.