96 PIONEERS OF SCIENCE IN AMERICA. 



About this time he was engaged by the publishers, Messrs. 

 Bradford and Inskeep, as assistant editor for the revision of 

 Rees's New Cyclopaedia, on " a generous salary," namely, nine 

 hundred dollars a year. He now gave up school-keeping, which 

 had been his calling for ten years. While in this position he 

 made known his plans for the American Ornithology to Brad- 

 ford, who readily agreed to undertake its publication. A pro- 

 spectus was immediately issued, and a year later, in September, 

 1808, the first volume of the work appeared. In the fall of 

 that year Wilson made a trip through New England, " in search 

 of bjrds and subscribers." On the way from Philadelphia he 

 stopped at Princeton to show his work to the college professors. 

 He expected to get some valuable information on American 

 birds from the Professor of Natural History, "but," he writes, 

 " I soon found, to my astonishment, that he scarcely knew a 

 sparrow from a woodpecker." W T herever he showed his book to 

 college professors, and other literary men, the highest praise 

 was lavished upon it, but subscriptions were not so freely forth- 

 coming, the price, one hundred and twenty dollars, being a 

 serious obstacle. He wrote from Albany, on his way home, 

 that he had obtained only forty-one subscribers. One of the 

 less intelligent personages, whose favour he had sought, was the 

 then Governor of New York Daniel D. Tompkins. This mag- 

 nate, as Wilson informs us, " turned over a few pages, looked at 

 a picture or two, asked me my price, and, while in the act of 

 closing the book, added, ' I would not give a hundred dollars 

 for all the birds you intend to describe, even had I them 

 alive.' " 



He soon set off again on a trip through Baltimore, Wash- 

 ington (where he was received " very kindly " by Jefferson), 

 and other Southern cities, and when he reached home had in 

 all two hundred and fifty subscribers. In the South he shot 

 several new birds. It was now deemed advisable to add three 

 hundred impressions of Volume I to the two hundred first 

 struck off, and the second volume started with an edition of 

 five hundred copies. His undertaking had already won him 

 " reputation and respect," but the pecuniary return was still 

 doubtful. 



Volume II of the Ornithology was ready in 1810, and in 

 February of that year Wilson set out on another hunt for new 

 specimens of the feathered tribes and those rarer birds sub- 



