26 The Wilson Bulletin — No. G6. 



natural science, and a desire to complete the vast enterprise so 

 far advanced by Wilson's labors, has induced us to undertake 

 the present work, in order to illustrate what premature death 

 prevented him from accomplishing, as well as the discoveries 

 subsequently made in the feathered tribes of these States. 

 This undertaking was not precipitately decided on, nor until 

 the author had well ascertained that no one else was willing to 

 engage in the work." 



Hugh Miller comments on this: " How vastly more strange 

 and extravagant looking truth is than fiction ! Our Edinburgh 

 reviewers deemed it one of the gravest among the many grave 

 offenses of Wordsworth, that he should have made the hero of 

 the ' Excursions ' a pedlar ; and if so severe on the mere choice 

 of so humble a hero, what would they not have said had the 

 poet ventured to represent his pedlar, not only as an accom- 

 plished writer, and a successful cultivator of natural sciences, 

 the author of a great work, eloquent as that of Buffon, and in- 

 comparably more truthful in its facts and observations? Nay, 

 what would they have said if, rising to the extreme of extrava- 

 gance, he had ventured to relate that the pedlar, having left 

 the magnificent work unfinished at his death, an accomplished 

 Prince — the nephew of by far the most puissant monarch of 

 modern times — took it up, and completed it in a volume bear- 

 ing honorable reference and testimony in almost every page, to 

 the ability and singular faithfulness of his humble predecessor, 

 the ' Wanderer.' And yet, this strange story would be exact- 

 ly that of the Paisley pedlar, Alexander Wilson." ^ 



Charles Lucian Bonaparte, Prince of Canino, and at the 

 death of Lucian, his father, Prince of Musignano, was born in 

 Paris, May 24, 1803, and appeared in the train of his uncle and 

 father-in-law, Joseph Bonaparte, ex-king of Spain, about 1822. 

 He is described by Dr. Edward Porter in a private letter dated 

 October 25, 1825, as " a little set, black-eyed fellow, quite talk- 

 ative, and withal an interesting and companionable fellow." ^ 

 He concerned himself chiefly in nomenclature and classifica- 

 tion. Indulging in some little field work about Philadelphia, 



^ History of the Bass Rock. 



= Stone, Auk, XVI, 1899, p. 170 



