I commenced my operations on the 1st of July, and have transcribed and corrected eighteen articles, one _for_ each day, but not one _on_ each, the work of Sunday being transferred to Monday. This volume will certainly be much richer and more interesting.... You wish to know my opinion as to the improvement of your style. It seems to me to be much the same as before, but the information which you give is more diversified & more satisfactory. On more than one occasion MacGillivray urged Audubon to reduce the size of his text, and in the letter just quoted he said: "Had it been of the post 8vo size, in two volumes it would have gone off in style; but your imperial size and regal price do not answer for radicals, or republicans either. Could you _sacrifice_ the first volume, reprint it of a small size and continue the series to the end?" He remarked that if twenty woodcuts or engravings were added to each volume, "it would spread over the land like a flock of migratory pigeons. Even without the embellishments it would fly, but were you to give it those additional wings, it would sweep along in beautiful curves, like the nighthawk or the purplebreasted swallow." "I have often thought," he continued, "that your stories would sell very well by themselves, and I am sure that with your celebrity, knowledge, and enthusiasm, you have it in your power to become more _popular_ than your glorious pictures can ever make you of themselves, they being too aristocratic and exclusive." Audubon kept MacGillivray supplied with materials, while he remained in London during the summer of 1834. On the 25th of August he wrote Bachman that he had sold bird skins to the British Museum to the amount of fifty-two pounds sterling, and again for twenty-five pounds, while Havell had disposed of a goodly number more, so that "he would not be a loser in that way"; he added: "My own double collection I have in drawers at home." Acting evidently upon Swainson's advice, Audubon began to accumulate a large and valuable collection of the skins of American birds, which he brought with him to America in 1839.[121] Though rightly criticized for not having deposited in some museum a complete series of the forms which he described, Elliott Coues certainly was not justified in remarking that his interest in a bird ceased from the moment he had made a drawing of it; on the contrary, he spent no end of time and lavished large sums of money on collections to illustrate variation in every description, as well as for anatomical dissection. A hint thrown out by MacGillivray seems to have been well taken, for in the letter just quoted Audubon said: "This coming winter I will spend at writing my _own_ Biography, to be published as soon as possible, and to be continued, as God may be pleased to grant me life." As already noticed,[122] this effort resulted only in a fragmentary sketch, which was not published for over half a century.