In authorship the public is mainly interested in seeing merit duly acknowledged. Said Audubon, in the introductory address to his first volume:
There are persons whose desire of obtaining celebrity induces them to suppress the knowledge of the assistance which they have received in the composition of their works. In many cases, in fact, the real author of the drawings or the descriptions in books on Natural History is not so much as mentioned, while the pretended author assumes to himself all the merit which the world is willing to allow him. This want of candour I could never endure. On the contrary, I feel pleasure in here acknowledging the assistance which I have received from a friend, Mr. William MacGillivray, who being possessed of a liberal education and a strong taste for the study of the Natural Sciences, has aided me, not in drawing the figures of my Illustrations, nor in writing the book now in your hand, although fully competent for both tasks, but in completing the scientific details, and in smoothing down the asperities of my Ornithological Biographies.
In the introduction to Volume IV he added that the
anatomical descriptions, as well as the sketches by which they are sometimes illustrated, have been executed by my learned friend, William MacGillivray, who in the most agreeable manner consented to undertake the labour, by no means small, of such a task, and to whom those who are interested in the progress of Ornithological science, as well as myself, must therefore feel indebted.
Audubon evidently believed that this printed acknowledgment was just; MacGillivray was as plainly satisfied, so that complaints which have been made against the naturalist on this score seem to have been rather groundless. It might be noticed that bookmaking at that time was regarded as more of a trade than at present; as Sir Walter Besant remarks, a traveler would often give his notes to a bookseller, who in turn would hand them over to a literary hack to be cast into suitable form.
AUDUBON'S INSCRIPTION IN THE COPY OF THE "ORNITHOLOGICAL BIOGRAPHY" PRESENTED TO WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY
A fine token of the friendship which existed between these two men was discovered in the summer of 1903 in a London bookshop, where it was found reflected in the pages of a handsomely bound copy of Audubon's Biography of Birds; on the title pages were inscribed the autographs of William MacGillivray, while on the first page of the introduction to the first volume the hand of Audubon had written this dedication: