132 The Wir.snx Bulletin— No. HR 



ALEXANDER A\'1LS()X. 



\'I. — Ills N()Mi:XCLATL'KE. 

 BY FRANK L. IIURNS. 



Dr. Colics lias declared that science would lose little, but 

 on the contrary, would gain much if every scrap of pre-Wil- 

 sonian writing about United States birds could be annihilated. 

 It is true, that foreign naturalists had been, for the most ])art. 

 bigoted, misinformed or too credulous ; and the few native 

 writers unsystematic, lacking in initiative and realization of 

 the importance of exactness. However. Wilson did not find 

 systematic ornithology an utter chaos. Linnaeus, the great 

 compiler, and his editor (imelin. had absorbed nuich from 

 our earlier writers, particularly Catesby. and his Systema 

 Naturae provided the ground plan and skeleton, it remained 

 to be consolidated, clothed, the gaps filled in : far too great 

 a task in its entirety for the inexperience and brief period 

 of Wilson, even had he the inclination for such work. 



W^ilson adopted, and with some exceptions, followed the 

 system used by Dr. J. Latham in his Index Ornithologicus, 

 and General Synopsis of Birds, which the Philadelphia libra- 

 ry supplied him. For the use of ]\I. Turton's version of 

 Linn;eus' Systema Naturre. he was indebted to his friend 

 Thomas Say. Mark Catesby's Natural History of Carolina, 

 Florida and the Bahama Islands ; George Edwards' work ; 

 Thomas Jefferson's Notes on the State of Mrginia ; William 

 Bartram's Travels through North and South Carolina. Geor- 

 gia, East and West Florida, the Cherokee Country, the ex- 

 tensive territories of the Muscogulges. or the Creek Con- 

 federacy, and the Country of the Choctaws ; Jeremy Belknap's 

 History of New Hampshire ; S. Williams' Natural and 

 Civil History of Vermont ; and Benjamin Snu'th Barton's 

 Fragments of Natural History of Pennsylvania : he found in 

 Bartram's library, or elsewhere 



Dr. Francis in describing Wilson's visit to New York, says 

 that he seized the moments of leasure he had. in closely ex- 

 anu'iu'ng books on natural science, in dift'erent libraries to 



