From Boston Audubon returned in October to New York, and thence went southward through Philadelphia to Washington, carrying with him letters from Washington Irving to Benjamin F. Butler, then the Attorney General of the United States, and to Martin Van Buren who had just been elected to the presidency. Butler was then quite a young man: "He read Washington Irving's letter, laid it down, and began a long talk about his talents, and after a while came round to my business, saying that the Government allows so little money to the departments, that he did not think it probable that their subscription could be obtained without a law to that effect from Congress." At this time he also met the President, General Jackson: "He was very kind, and as soon as he heard that we intended departing to-morrow evening for Charleston, invited us to dine with him _en famille._ At the hour named we went to the White House, and were taken into a room, where the President soon joined us, I sat close to him; we spoke of olden times, and touched slightly on politics, and I found him very averse to the Cause of the Texans.... The dinner was what might be called plain and substantial in England; I dined from a fine young turkey, shot within twenty miles of Washington. The General drank no wine, but his health was drunk by us more than once; and he ate very moderately; his last dish consisting of bread and milk." In November Audubon is again at the house of his friend Dr. Bachman, in Charleston, South Carolina. Here he passed the winter of 1836-7, making excursions to various points farther south, going as far as Florida. It was at this time that he seems to have begun, in connection with Dr. Bachman, his studies in Natural History which resulted in the publication, a few years later, of the "Quadrupeds of North America."