Burns — On Alexander Wilson. 21 



same g^racions indulgence the specimens which I here humbly 

 present her ; should she express a desire for me to go and 

 bring her more, the highest wishes of my ambition will be 

 gratified ; for, in the language of my little friend, our whole 

 woods are full of them ! and I can collect hundreds more, 

 much handsomer than these." 



It is fortunate for the truthfulness of the text that Wilson 

 took little for granted in the matter of life histories. To illus- 

 trate the careful manner in which he labored before making a 

 statement, one or two instances will be sufficient. That the 

 Nighthawk and Whippoorwill were one and the same species, 

 was accepted as a fact by both William Bartram and Dr. B. S. 

 Barton, of Philadelphia, who were undoubtedly the leading 

 American authorities of the period. Wilson desired proof, so 

 he shot thirteen specimens of the former at different times and 

 at different places, nine were found by dissection to be males 

 and four females. Two others were shot as they flushed from 

 their eggs, and found to agree with the four preceding. A 

 Whippoorwill was shot in the evening, while in the act of re- 

 peating his usual notes, three others were secured at different 

 times of the day, two of them females, one of them having 

 been sitting on two eggs. Not only the difference in plumage, 

 notes and habits, but the difference in the eggs of the two spe- 

 cies, were noted. The result was not only convincing proof 

 for his friend Bartram, but the introduction of a new species 

 in the Whippoorwill. 



The learned Barton had asserted that no fact in ornithology 

 was better established than that of the occasional torpidity of 

 the Barn Swallow and Chimney Swift,^ and he was not alone 

 in his belief. After careful investigations of some years, Wil- 

 son pronounced the hibernation of these birds during the win- 

 ter months a myth, and ridicules the idea under the head of 

 the Barn Swallow : . . . " Yet this little wins^cd seraph, if I may 

 so speak, who, in a few days, and at will, can pass from the 

 borders of the arctic regions to the torrid zone, is forced, when 

 winter approaches, to descend to the l)ottom of lakes, rivers, 



'Tilloch's Philosophical Masiaziiio, Vol. XXII, 1805, pp. 204-211; 

 aud Vol. XXXV, 1810. Pp. 241-247. 



