Within a year of his return to England, Gould had the misfortune (the greatest that could befall him) to lose his wife, a shock from which he never recovered, and his later years were further saddened by the loss of two of his sons, both of whom had adopted the medical profession.
It is now a matter of history how Gould offered the whole of his Australian collection of birds and eggs to the trustees of the British Museum for £1,000 (after spending £2,000 on the expedition), or as a donation if they would purchase twenty-five copies of his work. The collection contained examples of both sexes of nearly every known species of Australian birds, and mostly original types—1,800 specimens in all,—carefully labelled with full data. It was a national calamity that the offer was declined, and, under the chagrin at the unexpected refusal of his offer to the nation, Gould immediately accepted £1,000 for the collection tendered by Dr. Thos. B. Wilson, of Philadelphia, for the Academy of Natural Sciences of that city.[1] Great Britain's loss was America's gain.
Besides being a keen ornithologist, there was business in Gould's methods. At the great exhibition of 1851, ho obtained permission to erect a building at the Zoological Gardens, and to exhibit his twenty-four cases of mounted Humming Birds, his own handiwork. We are told that when the season was over, the building demolished and its materials sold, Gould found himself with a clear profit of £800. (The admission was sixpence.)
As a man of business Gould was punctilious, making it a rule to pay for all the work directly it was delivered, and herein lay much of the secret of his being so well served.
Coming nearer to the great authors individuality, those persons who remember him in his early days say he was a man of singular energy, with a good knowledge of the art of mounting animals.
Considering Gould was self-taught, his talents for sketching the details of a bird picture were remarkable, and, although he had excellent interpreters in his wife, and, afterwards, in artist friends, still his was always the moving spirit in designing the plates or the rough sketches.
Dr. Sharpe, who was associated much with Gould in his latter days, when he (Gould) was invalided (with bladder complaint), and, as is well known, assisted him in the preparation of the "Birds of New Guinea," and after his death completed some of his other works, says that "In
- ↑ A complete catalogue of Gould's collection of Australian Birds in the Academy is likely to be published shortly. Out of 391 names given by Gould to Australian birds the types of no less than 321 are said to be in Philadelphia.
