SKETCH OF ALEXANDER WILSON. 403 



nearly six years. His own education had been limited ; so, after he 

 began to teach, he had to study diligently to make up his deficien- 

 cies. He advanced so far in mathematics that he was enabled to 

 take occasional employment as a surveyor. 



After leaving Milestown he taught for a while at Bloomfield, 

 N. J., but he found this place disagreeable, and he was at the same 

 time burdened with a trouble, only dimly revealed in his letters, 

 but in which one of the Milestown young ladies figured. He be- 

 came very despondent, and even thought of returning to Scotland. 

 It was not long before he obtained a school at Kingsessing, near 

 Gray's Ferry, on the Schuylkill. His removal to this place was 

 attended with important results. He became acquainted with 

 William Bartram, whose famous garden was not far away, and 

 with Alexander Lawson, the engraver, both of whom became his 

 steadfast friends. Bartram lent him books, among them, the works 

 of Catesby and Edwards. In the parts of these works relating to 

 American birds, Wilson's own acquaintance with the birds was 

 enough to show him an exasperating number of errors, false theo- 

 ries, and caricatured figures. During the early part of his life at 

 this place Wilson was so despondent that Lawson at one time feared 

 for his reason, and advised him to give up poetry and his flute, 

 which seemed to increase his melancholy, and to take up drawing. 

 This accomplishment does not seem to have come very naturally to 

 him, for he made a failure of the landscapes and human figures 

 which Lawson set before him. Still, the statement of an American 

 writer, that he was " without any previously suspected aptitude," is 

 denied by Mr. Grosart, who adds that drawings by him before he 

 left Scotland are preserved in the Paisley Museum with the col- 

 lection of Wilson's manuscripts. Bartram and his niece, Miss 

 Nancy, started him again on easier subjects, first flowers, and then 

 birds, with which he made encouraging success. 



It is in a letter to one of his Scottish biographers, his old friend 

 in Paisley, Mr. Thomas Crichton, under date of June 1, 1803, that 

 Wilson's determination to study the birds of America is earliest 

 recorded. " Close application to the duties of my profession," he 

 writes, " which I have followed since November, 1795, has deeply 

 injured my constitution, the more so that my rambling disposition 

 was the worst calculated of any one's in the world for the austere 

 regularity of a teacher's life. I have had many pursuits since I 

 left Scotland mathematics, the German language, music, draw- 

 ing, etc., and I am now about to make a collection of all our finest 

 birds." At first he devoted only leisure hours to the birds, and 

 his figures " were chiefly colored by candle-light," but he soon be- 

 gan to make longer and longer expeditions. In October, 1804, he 

 set out with two companions, on foot, to visit Niagara. From 

 there he went through the lake region of central New York, visit- 



