the road she was
travelling, in a fervour of love for the birds and indignation at the
hunter, she told the Cardinal's life history in these pages.

The story was promptly accepted and the book was published with very
beautiful half-tones, and cardinal buckram cover. Incidentally, neither
the author's husband nor daughter had the slightest idea she was
attempting to write a book until work had progressed to that stage
where she could not make a legal contract without her husband's
signature. During the ten years of its life this book has gone through
eight different editions, varying in form and make-up from the birds in
exquisite colour, as colour work advanced and became feasible, to a
binding of beautiful red morocco, a number of editions of differing
design intervening. One was tried in gray binding, the colour of the
female cardinal, with the red male used as an inset. Another was
woodsgreen with the red male, and another red with a wild rose design
stamped in. There is a British edition published by Hodder and
Stoughton. All of these had the author's own illustrations which
authorities agree are the most complete studies of the home life and
relations of a pair of birds ever published.

The story of these illustrations in "The Cardinal" and how the author
got them will be a revelation to most readers. Mrs. Porter set out to
make this the most complete set of bird illustrations ever secured, in
an effort to awaken people to the wonder and beauty and value of the
birds. She had worked around half a dozen nests for two years and had
carried a lemon tree from her conservatory to the location of one nest,
buried the tub, and introduced the branches among those the birds used
in approaching their home that she might secure proper illustrations
for the opening chapter, which was placed in the South. When the
complete bird series was finished, the difficult work over, and there
remained only a few characteristic Wabash River studies of flowers,
vines, and bushes for chapter tail pieces to be secured, the author
"met her Jonah," and her escape was little short of a miracle.

After a particularly strenuous spring afield, one teeming day in early
August she spent the morning in the river bottom beside the Wabash. A
heavy rain followed by August sun soon had her dripping while she made
several studies of wild morning glories, but she was particularly
careful to wrap up and drive slowly going home, so that she would not
chi