2. The Plates representing the Birds are correctly reduced from the original drawings, and are coloured in the most careful manner.
3. The work will appear in numbers, on the first and fifteenth of every month.
4. Each number will consist of Five Plates, accompanied with full descriptions of the habits and localities of the birds, their anatomy and digestive organs, (with occasionally wood cuts representing the latter,) and will be furnished to subscribers for one dollar, payable on delivery.
5. The work will be published in accordance with a scientific arrangement of the genera and species, and will complete the Ornithology of our country, it is believed, in the most perfect manner.
TITLE PAGE OF PAPER COVERS IN WHICH PARTS OF THE FIRST AMERICAN (OCTAVO) EDITION OF "THE BIRDS OF AMERICA" WERE ORIGINALLY ISSUED.
The octavo edition of Audubon's Birds began to appear, in parts, late in 1839, and was in press four years. It was illustrated with 500 lithographic plates, which were reduced by John Woodhouse Audubon from his father's old or new originals, with such changes as the breaking up of composite plates and other considerations rendered necessary. Many new flowers and trees made their appearance in these plates, and seventeen new birds were added to the last volume; the text was also greatly improved by the process of addition and subtraction, as well as by the correction of many errors which it was then possible to effect: as twelve species were noticed without figures, this brought the total number of American birds finally recognized by Audubon to 507.[175] The first considerable list of American birds with any pretense to accuracy appeared in Notes on Virginia, published in 1782, by Thomas Jefferson, who then named 109 species peculiar to the United States; William Bartram, in 1791, gave 191; Alexander Wilson, 278; Wilson and Ord, in 1808-14, 320, and Charles Bonaparte, in 1825-33, is said to have extended the number to 382. The present number of North American birds, omitting sub-species, admitted to the third revised edition of the "Check-List," prepared by a Committee of the American Ornithologists' Union and published in New York in 1910, is 768. To this is added a hypothetical list of 26 names, the validity of which is still in doubt; these embrace Townsend's Bunting—Spiza townsendi (Audubon); Carbonated Warbler—Dendroica carbonata (Audubon), Blue Mountain Warbler—Dendroica montana (Wilson), known only in the works of Wilson and Audubon; the mysterious Small-headed "Flycatcher," or Warbler—Musicapa minuta (Wilson) or Wilsonia (?) microcephala (Ridgway), an account of which is given in [Chapter XIV] and which is known only in Wilson's and Audubon's works; and Cuvier's Regulus—Regulus cuvieri (Audubon), which has never been seen beyond the covers of The Birds of America, and its descriptive text: "I shot this bird," said Audubon, "on my father-in-law's plantation of Fatland Ford, on the Skuylkill River in Pennsylvania, on the 8th June 1812, while on a visit to my honoured relative Mr. William Bakewell.... I have not seen another since."
Audubon was soon canvassing the principal cities for this work, with what success is shown by the following letter[176] to his family: