476 ALEXANDER WILSON [1806. 



ALEXANDER WILSON* TO WILLIAM BARTRAM. 



Union School, May 22d, 1804. 



My dear Friend : 



I truly sympathize, though not without a smile, at the undeserved 

 treatment you have experienced from your busy colony. Recol- 

 lection of the horrible fate of their fathers, smothered with sulphur ; 

 or, perhaps, a presentiment of what awaits themselves, might have 

 urged them to this outrage ; but had they known you, my dear 

 friend, as well as I do, they would have distilled their honey into 

 your lips, instead of poison, and circled around you, humming 

 grateful acknowledgments to their benevolent benefactor, who 

 spreads such a luxuriance of blossoms for their benefit. 



Accept my thanks for the trouble I put you to yesterday. 



Mrs. Leech requests me to send Miss Bartram two birds ; and 

 thinks they would look best, drawn so that the pictures may hang 

 their length horizontally. 



I send a small scroll of drawing paper for Miss Nancy. She 

 will oblige me by accepting it ; and as soon as I get some letter 

 paper, worthy your acceptance, which will be to-morrow, I shall be 

 happy of the opportunity of supplying you. 



There are some observations in your last which I would remark 

 on ; but am hurried at the present moment. Farewell. 



Yours, sincerely, 



Alex. Wilson. 



Philadelphia, November 16th, 1806. 



My dear Friend : 



Mr. Jones will hand you this, and receive any notes you may 

 have had leisure to draw up, for the Cyclopaedia. I shall be ex- 

 tremely happy to receive the additional matter, which you think 

 necessary to add to your father's memoirs ; and I think that if 

 time would permit you to draw up a short account of the com- 

 mencement and progress of botanical research, in this country, it 

 would afford you an opportunity of doing justice to many worthy 



* Alexander Wilson, the father of American Ornithology, was born in Scot- 

 land, July 6, 1766 ; emigrated to the United States in 1794, and died in Phila- 

 delphia, August 28, 1813, aged forty-seven years. For a most interesting memoir 

 of this amiable man, by George Ord, Esq., see Harrison Hall's edition of the 

 American Ornithology, published in 1828. 



