16 The Wilson Bulletin — No. 66. 



ALEXANDER WILSON. 



\'. — The Completion of the American Ornithology. 



by frank l. burns. 



Many years after the death of Alexander Wilson, in regis- 

 tering- at a hotel near Niagara Falls, Audubon wrote after his 

 name, " Who like Wilson, will ramble, but never, like that 

 great man, die under the lash of a bookseller." This opinion 

 is further emphasized by Miss Malvina Lawson, a daughter of 

 the engraver, in a letter dat«^d from West Chester, February G, 

 lS7i), to Professor S. S. Haldeman, and containing- personal 

 recollections of Wilson ; in which she bluntly asserts that " to 

 all his other trials was added the fact that killed him — the 

 dishonesty of his publisher.""^ She also writes in part: 

 " When we were children, father often diverged a little when 

 taking us to Bartram's garden to visit the place where his old 

 friend lived and sufifered. T do not think there is an inch of 

 ground in that locality that remains the same. ... I was not 

 seven years old when Wilson died, and my memory of him is 

 in pictures as childhood's memory always is. T remember him 

 offering- me a Baltimore yellow bird he had shot in the woods, 

 when coming" to our house in the country, and my decided re- 

 fusal to touch it. But I remember perfectly his brilliant eye 

 and hair black as an Indian's, and as straight." 



It is beyond doubt that Wilson lived up to both the spirit 

 and letter of his contract, and it is presumed that the ]niblish- 

 ers were not delinquent, although not even the author appeared 

 to know exactly what their part called for beyond meeting the 

 expenses. Of the senior member of the firm, Dunlap states: 

 '' Mr. Bradford was a man of generous disposition and sound 

 judgment. He headed a list of subscribers (Wilson was a 

 contributor also) to raise a fund for Leslie's - maintenance 

 during two years in London and canceled his indenture, al- 

 though it had four years yet to run." It is not at all improb- 

 able that Wilson's publishers deserved the highest praise in- 



1 renii Monthly, 1870, p. 444. 



^Charles Robert Leslie, who became m sresit subject i);iinter. 



