218 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 



in an edition of 200 copies. Wilson immediately started 

 on a canvassing tour of New England, in the course of 

 which he visited the principal towns and colleges, going 

 east to Portland, Maine, and as far north as Dartmouth 

 College, in New Hampshire, where President John 

 Wheelock and the professors received him with marked 

 attention. On this journey Wilson did not average one 

 subscriber a day, and he was forced to conclude that he 

 had "been mistaken in publishing a work too good for 

 the country"; "it is a fault," he said, "not likely to be 

 repeated, and will pretty severely correct itself." Dan- 

 iel D. Tompkins, Governor of New York, coolly said 

 to him: "I would not give one hundred dollars for all 

 the birds you intend to describe," not even if "I had them 

 alive"; but a future Governor of that State, De Witt 

 Clinton, the friend of science and scientific men, gave 

 him the substantial encouragement he craved. When 

 his second volume was ready for issue, Wilson wrote to 

 Bartram: "This undertaking has involved me in diffi- 

 culties and expenses which I never dreamt of, and I 

 have never yet received one cent from it. I am, there- 

 fore, a volunteer in the cause of Natural History im- 

 pelled by nobler views than those of money." 



In the autumn of 1808 Wilson made a long and 

 arduous tour of the South, in the course of which he 

 visited every important town along the southern Atlan- 

 tic seaboard, and though it cost him dear, he obtained 



Orleans in seventeen days gave him 60 subscribers; Europe supplied 15, 

 among whom were William Roscoe, later a patron of Audubon, and 

 Benjamin West, the artist. Wilson figured and described 278 species of 

 American birds (within the limits of the United States), of which 56 

 were supposed to be new, and the total number, given by Wilson and 

 Ord, is said to be 320. Twenty-three species were erroneously supposed 

 to be identical with their European counterparts, yet all of Wilson's birds 

 except the "Small-headed Flycatcher," referred to at the end of this 

 chapter, have been identified. Considering the time and the difficulties 

 under which he labored, his mistakes were remarkably few. 



