Burns — On Alexander Wilson. 183 



through the kindness of his host, the Roseate Spoonbill. The 

 last lap of 252 miles of the land journey, brought him to New 

 Orleans ; not however before he had visited his hospitable 

 friend. Dr. Samuel Brown, near Fort Adams at the extreme 

 southwestern part of the State — here the association of the 

 magnolia with the warbler of that name. Arriving at the 

 Crescent city on June Gth, another surprise awaited him in the 

 shape of sixty subscribers, by the 30th, on which date he look 

 passage on a ship bound for New York. Becalmed for 

 twenty days in the Gulf of Mexico and carried by currents as 

 far south as Cape Antonia, the westernmost extremity of Cuba ; 

 he met with the White Ibis again on the low keys ofif the 

 peninsula of Florida, having first observed it in June on the 

 borders of Lake Pontchartrain, Louisiana ; also in passing 

 along the northern coast of Cuba, and the coasts of Florida an(^ 

 Georgia, in July, the Sooty Tern was found very numerous, 

 and Wilson shot and dissected several. In passing tbe coasts 

 of Florida and the Carolinas, great numbers of Wilson's Pet- 

 rals were encountered and notwithstanding the superstitious 

 fears of the seamen, fourteen specimens were shot on a calm 

 day and a boat lowered to pick them up, some eighty or ninety 

 miles off the coasts of South Carolina. Wilson reached Phila- 

 delphia on the 2nd of August, 1810. It is stated that his total 

 expenses up to his arrival at New York, were only $455. 



The third and fourth volumes appeared during February 

 and September, 1811, and the fifth and sixth numbers, in 

 February and August, 1812 ; Wilson taking frequent short 

 excursions in search of material, particularly to the Blue 

 mountains in Northhampton covmty, where he doubtless 

 secured his Blue Mountain Warbler ; and the headwaters of 

 the Lehigh and Pocono region, Pennsylvania ; where he killed 

 the American Crossbill, Wilson's Thrush, and became more 

 intimately acquainted jvith many of our Warblers. During 

 this time be resided at the Bartram homestead, and here in an 

 atmosphere most congenial to literary labor, composed much 

 of his Ornithology. Soon after the sixth volume was brought 

 from the press, he undertook a second journey into the Eastern 



