LIFE OF WILSON. cix 



by appearances ; and marvellous narratives, in that science ■whicli he had so 

 much at heart, were the objects of his decided disapprobation. The ridicule 

 and scorn with which he treated the hypothesis of the annual torpidity of 

 swallows are well known ; and he regarded with equal contempt those tales 

 of the fascinating faculty attributed to serpents, which are yet but too well 

 adapted to the taste of the multitude to be effectively discredited. 



Having been " something of a traveller," it would be reasonable to conclude 

 that Wilson had been familiar with " novel sights;" but we nowhere find that 

 he ever beheld a toad leaping into day from its rocky domicil of five thousand 

 years, or a mermaid " sleeking her soft alluring locks" in the sun. That won- 

 der of the " vasty deep," the Sea Serpent of Grloucester, had not attracted the 

 attention of the public in his time; but if it had, there is little doubt that he 

 would have promptly exerted himself to expose one of the grossest fictions that 

 was ever palmed upon the credulity of mankind. 



That the industry of Wilson was great, his work will for ever testify. And 

 our admiration is excited, that so much should have been performed in so short 

 a time. When we take into consideration the state of our country, as respects 

 the cultivation of the physical sciences; and that in the walk of Ornithology, 

 particularly, no one, deserving the title of a Naturalist^ had yet presumed to 

 tread ; when we view the labors of foreigners, who had inferested themselves 

 in our natural productions, and find how incompetent they were, through a defi- 

 ciency of correct information, to instruct; and then whep we reflect that a 

 single individual, '■'without patron^ fortune, or recompense," accomplished, in 

 the space of seven years, as much as the combined body of European natural- 

 ists took a century to achieve, we feel almost inclined to doubt the evidence 

 upon which this conclusion is founded. But it is a fact, which we feel a pride 

 in asserting, that we have as faithful, complete, and interesting, an account of 

 our birds, in the volumes of the American Ornithology, as the Europeans can 

 at this moment boast of possessing of theirs. Let those who question the cor- 

 rectness of this opinion examine for themselves, and determine according to 

 the dictates of an unbiassed judgment. 



We need no other evidence of the unparalleled industry of our author, than 

 the fact, that of two hundred and seventy-eight species, which have been figured 

 and described in his Ornithology,* y?//'y-.si!x had not been taken notice of by 

 any former naturalist ;■[• and several of the latter number are so extremely rare, 



* The whole number of birds figured is three hundred and twenty. 



f In this statement of the number of new species, I followed Wilson's own catalogue, 

 wherein they are indicated. But it is proper to observe, that Vieillot's " Oiseaux de 

 L'Am^rigite Se]>te>itrionale" was never seen by our author; otherwise he would have 

 taken notice that some of his supposed nondescripts were figured and described in the 

 above-mentioned costly work, which was published in Paris in the year 1807. Vieillot 

 travelled in the United States, with the view of giving an account of our birds ; he pub- 

 lished only two folio volumes, with colored plates ; his publisher failed ; and the copper- 

 plates of the work, including those intended for the third volume, were sold at public sale 

 for old copper ; and are now (1825) in Philadelphia, and the property of William Ma- 

 clure, Esq., the President of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. 



