xviii. MEMOIR OF THOMAS SAY. 



lie thought he was confining himself to a simple declaration 

 of facts, the diction he employs is so turgid or pleonastic, 

 that one would almost be tempted to believe he esteemed 

 facts of less importance than the cadence of a period.* 



During the latter part of Mr. Say's residence in Phila- 

 delphia, he had duties to perform besides those which ap- 

 pertained to his own pursuits. Charles Lucien Bonaparte, 

 Prince of Musignano, wishing to communicate to the public 

 •some observations on certain subjects of natural history, and 

 critical remarks upon the Ornithology of Wilson, sought the 

 assistance of Mr. Say, who cheerfully granted it ; hence all 

 those papers to which the name of Charles Bonaparte is at- 

 tached, in the Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences, 

 were corrected and arranged for publication by Mr. Say ; 

 whose task was troublesome, inasmuch as it is less difficult 

 to compose entirely from materials furnished by another, 

 than to place into form the crude language of one but par- 

 tially acquainted with the idiom of our tongue. Mr. Say, 

 also, was employed by the Prince of Musignano to prepare 

 for the press his first volume of " The Natural History of 

 Birds inhabiting the United States," in continuation of 

 Wilson's American Ornithology. This volume, subsequently, 

 for reasons which need not be here stated, underwent the 

 revision and correction of the late Dr. Godman. 



The readiness with which Mr. Say attended to the wants 

 of others, his liberality in communicating his knowledge to 

 those who sought it, together with his urbanity and com- 

 panionable qualities, were the occasion of such repeated in- 

 terruptions, that he felt constrained to appropriate those 

 hours to his private studies, which ought to have been de- 

 voted to rest ; hence to him the season of midnight was the 

 hour of prime, it was the time of stillness and tranquillity ; 

 and so greatly did he enjoy these vigils, that he not unfre- 

 quently prolonged them, even during the summer, until the 

 approach of day. Of this injudicious application to study 



* See particularly American Entomology, Vol. I., article Blaps sutu- 

 ralis, and Silliman's Journal of Science, Vol. I., article Herpetology. 



