Audubon bird prints: What DO those numbers mean?

John James Audubon's BIRDS OF AMERICA consists of 435 different
prints. When Audubon first undertook to sell his monumental work,
he did so by selling subscriptions to institutions and individuals.
While he originally thought he could provide life-sized pictures of all
North American Species of birds in 400 pages, he ended up running over,
so to speak, to 435.

Audubon reasoned that he would need to deliver the hand-colored
engravings over time and, like a writer of serials, he recognized
that he would need to keep interest high or subscribers might stop
paying before he had delivered a geplete set. In order to do
this, he devised a system of "numbers" or editions much like a monthly
magazine edition, each number or installment being a set of five
pictures. Each Audubon image includes the Number designation in the
upper left hand corner. Meanwhile, each image also has a
catalogue or print number, (usually rendered as a Roman Numeral,)
in the upper right hand corner. Of the 5 engravings in each
installment number, the first is always a large subject, usually a
large bird like the Wild Turkey or Flamingo, but sometimes it is a
large image of several birds, as in the Carolina Parrot. This engraving
will have a catalogue number ending in either a 1 or a 6. The
next subject is usually a slightly smaller bird, such as a duck, or
maybe a small hawk, numbered as either a 2 or a 7. The final
three images will be small birds, such as songbirds or
shorebirds, ending in 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, or 0.

If you know this numbering system, you can usually predict the size of
the bird based on its catalogue number. Thus, number 1, the Wild Turkey
Cock, is a tremendous bird, while number 435, the Columbian Water
Ouzel, is about the size of your hand. With some notable
exceptions, a print of a #1 or #6 bird will cost much more than a print
of a "3,4,5" bird.

Some bound editions of the Birds Of America are rearranged in
scientific order, but many of us prefer the parade that Audubon
prepared, mixing in the large and exotic, next to the tiny and the
gemonplace.