Note 385 — Chapter XXV · AUDUBON'S LETTERPRESS AND ITS RIVALS

American Ornithology, or the Natural History of the Birds of the United States. By Alexander Wilson and Charles Lucien Bonaparte. Edited by Robert Jameson ... Regius Professor of Natural History in the University of Edinburgh. Appearing as vols. lxviii-lxxi of Constable's Miscellany, 4 vols., 18mo., Edinburgh and London, 1831. This was the fourth (?) edition of Wilson's work, and the first (?) to appear in Europe; with portrait of Wilson and vignettes on titles engraved by Lizars, memoir of Wilson by W. M. Hetherington, and extracts from Audubon, Richardson, and Swainson.

The plates of this edition were issued in numbers, under title of Illustrations of American Ornithology; reduced from the work of Wilson; 18mo., Edinburgh and London (1831). In a notice of the first number which appeared in the Caledonian Mercury (Edinburgh) for Oct. 29, 1831, it was stated that the plates were issued in small size to be bound up with Jameson's edition of the text, and that they were intended "for a different class of purchasers from those likely to take the folio edition, then being brought out by the publishers of Constable's Miscellany. The plates were engraved in line and executed in a very superior style, both plain and colored."