The field was long and wide as it was inviting to the man of science. And the large corps of medical men dispersed over the state, working in concert with each other, and in daily contact with the observing hunter, constituted an academy of science that will not likely ever find its parallel in enthusiasm, character and efficiency. The country was so healthy that the practice of medicine was limited and unremunerative, and the doctor who carried a gun and whistle for a dog often had much of his time and attention taken up with things other than squirrels. He conversed with intelligent hunters, and listened attentively to all they had to say, and then investigated their statements of every thing in turn, from the habits and life of the black ant, that relieves the beasts and birds from annoying ticks, up to the most perplexing questions in natural history. His shelves were loaded with mineral and archæological specimens; his cases glistened with the bright plumage of rare taxidermic birds; his drawers filled with oological information; and every rare plant, tree and shrub accurately drawn and classified, with the fruits and flowers indigenous to different parts of the state, received attention and preservation. And the question may be suggested, Where did all this wealth of thought and investigation, scattered over the state, go to? The answer is found in the collections of nearly every natural history society in the United States--in the geological surveys of the state, and in the everlasting records made by Thomas Nuttall, John J. Audubon and Alexander Wilson. These noted authors with pens, pencils and brushes were in the new world collecting facts--each independent of the other. Nuttall, to make a compendious and scientific treatise on ornithology, hoping to produce it at a price so reasonable as to permit it to find a place in the hands of general readers. Audubon marked out his designs on a much larger and more expensive scale--to give the exact size, coloring, etc., of the birds and botany indigenous to the country. This required double elephantine sheets, three feet three inches long, by two feet two inches wide, to accommodate figures of the large birds. Exactness was a prominent feature in making this descriptive history. The eye was never trusted for size; every portion of each object--the bill, the feet, the legs, the claws, the very feathers as they projected beyond each other, were accurately measured. These full-size drawings were engraved and artistically colored by hand, according to the pattern drawings and colorings made by the author’s pencil and brush. Collecting and formulating the material for the four hundred plates, required six year’s labor in the unbroken forests, and the publication handicraft twenty more in a foreign country. It was nevertheless completed and will forever remain as pronounced, by the immortal Cuvier, “_The greatest monument ever erected by Art to Nature_.”