Beschreibung:

AUDUBON, JOHN JAMES Autograph letter signed ("John J. Audubon") with initialled postscript, to John Townsend of Philadelphia ("My dear young Friend"), Charleston, [South Carolina], 4 November 1833. 2 pages, 4to, integral address leaf with panel in Audubon's hand and wax seal, address leaf with fold separations . "Your beautiful Bunting has been figured [drawn] twice by myself and twice also by my Friend John Bachman's Sister -- you will therefore see that we have used it well ! It will be forwarded...with another New Bird discovery...it is nearly allied to Sylvia vermivora of Wilson, but still amply differing from it, to establish it as a very distinct species. I wish you to give it to our friend the learned Charles Pickering...and ask to him to search in the Library for it if published...and to let me know to what genus or species it belongs.... It may have been already described as a South American species...but I have no chance to judge without Books, and of these I possess but very few. If [it is] a new species I wish it to be named after Nuttal, and should like a minute of it made in the first meeting of the Academy of Natural Sciences of your City. I procured 4 new Subscriptions at Baltimore....My Wood Wren is to be found wintering here. I will try to send the Society a specimen....We are all engaged in drawing Birds. plants &c, and I am writing the 2nd Volume of my Family's Biographies [the Ornithological Biography ]. It is you know a large family and if I can render justice to each Individual...it is is to be hoped that sooner or later the World will acknowledge me a good, well intentioned Parent !...." Apparently unpublished, not in Letters , ed. Corning. Provenance : Dr. Evan Morton Evans (1870-1955) Daniel Webster Evans (1907-1966)