xviii HISTORICAL PREFACE. 



the first time, or entirely new to science. This work, bearing much the same relation 

 to its times that Catesby's and Edwards' respectively did to theirs, is said to have been 

 published in twenty-two parts of six plates each, probably during several years ; but the 

 date of its inception I have never been able to ascertain. However this may be, Vieillot 

 alone and completely fills a period of eight years, during which no other notable or even 

 mentionable treatise upon North American birds saw the light. Vieillot's case is an 

 exceptional one. As the author of numerous splendidly illustrated works, all of which, 

 live; of a system of ornithology, most of the generic names contained in which are 

 ingrained in the science ; of very extensive encyclopsedic work in which hundreds of 

 species of birds receive new technical names : Vieillot has a fame which time rather 

 brightens than obscures. Yet it is to be feared that the world was unkind during his 

 lifetime. At Paris, he stood in the shadow of Cuvier's great name; Temminck assailed 

 him from Holland ; Avhile, as to his work upon our birds, many years passed before it 

 was appreciated or in any way adequately recognized. Thus, singularly, so great a work 

 as the "Histoire Naturelle" — one absolutely characteristic of a period — had no appre- 

 ciable effect upon the course of events till long after the times that saw its birth, when 

 Cassin, Baird, and others brought Vieillot into proper perspective. There is so little 

 trace of Vieillot during the Wilsonian and Audubonian epochs, that his " Birds of North 

 America " may almost be said to have slept for half a century. But to-day, the solitary 

 figure of the Vieillotian period stands out in bold relief. 



(1808-1824.) 



The Wilsonian Period. — The " Paisley weaver ; " the "Scotch pedler;" the "melan- 

 choly poet-naturalist ;" the "father of American ornithology," — strange indeed are the 

 guises of genius, yet stranger its disguises in the epithets by which we attempt to label 

 and pigeon-hole that thing which has no name but its own, no place but its own. Alex- 

 ander Wilson had genius, and not much of anything else — very little learning, scarcely 

 any money, not many friends, and a paltry share of " the world's regard " while he lived.. 

 But genius brings a message which men must hear, and never tire of hearing; it is 

 the word that comes when the passion that conceives is wedded with the patience that 

 achieves. Wilson was a poet by nature, a naturalist by force of circumstances, an Ameri- 

 can ornithologist by mere accident, — that is, if anything can be accidental in the life of 

 a man of genius. As a poet, he missed greatness by those limitations of passion which 

 seem so sad and so unaccountable ; as the naturalist, he achieved it by the patience that, 

 knew no limitation till death interposed. As between the man and his works, the very 

 touchstone of genius is there ; for the man was greater than all his works are. Genius, 

 may do that which satisfies all men, but never that which satisfies itself ; for its ins])ira- 

 tion is infinite and divine, its accomplishment finite and human. Such is the penalty 

 of its possession. 



Wilson made, of course, the epoch in which his work appeared, and I cannot restrict 

 the Wilsonian period otherwise than by giving to Vieillot his own. The period of Wil- 

 son's actual authorship was brief; it began in September, 1808, when the first volume of 

 the " American Ornithology" appeared, and was cut short by death before the work was 

 finished. Wilson, having been born July 6, 1766, and come to America in 1794, died 

 August 23, 1813, when his seventh volume was finished ; the eightli and ninth being 



