and learned institutions. The Lenox Library in New York owns three sets. The Astor Library owns one set. I have examined this work there; there are four volumes in a set; they are elephant folio size—more than three feet long, and two or more feet wide. They are the heaviest books I ever handled. It takes two men to carry one volume to the large racks which hold them for the purpose of examination. The birds, of which there are a thousand and fifty-five specimens in four hundred and thirty-five plates, are all life size, even the great eagles, and appear to be unfaded. This work, which cost the original subscribers one thousand dollars, now brings four thousand dollars at private sale.
Of the edition with reduced figures and with the bird biographies, many more were sold, and all considerable public libraries in this country possess the work. It consists of seven imperial
