LIFE OF WILSON. clxi 



the honour to elect me a member, for which I must certainly, 

 in gratitude, make them a communication on some subject, 

 this summer. I long very much to hear from you; and, with 

 my best wishes for your health and happiness, am very truly 



Your sincere friend." 



As soon as the seventh volume of the Ornithology was pub- 

 lished, its author, and the writer of this sketch, set out on their 

 last expedition to Great Egg-harbour. * There they remained 

 for nearly four weeks, constantly occupied in collecting mate- 

 rials for the eighth volume, which Wilson had resolved should 

 in no respects fall short of the preceding; but which should, if 

 possible, enhance his reputation, by the value of its details, 

 and the beauty of its embellishments. 



Immediately on his return to Philadelphia, he engaged anew 

 in his arduous avocation; and by the month of August he had 

 succeeded in completing the letter-press of the eighth volume, 

 though the whole of the plates were not finished. But unfor- 

 tunately his great anxiety to conclude the work, condemned 

 him to an excess of toil, which, inflexible as was his mind, his 

 bodily frame was unable to bear. He was likewise, by this 

 flood of business, prevented from residing in the country, 

 where hours of mental lassitude might have been beguiled by a 

 rural walk, or the rough but invigorating exercise of the 

 gun. At length he was attacked by a disease, which, perhaps, 

 at another period of his life might not have been attended with 

 fatal effects, but which now, in his debilitated state of body, 

 and harassed mind, proved a mighty foe, whose assaults all the 

 combined efforts of friendship, science and skill, could not re- 

 pel. The Dysentery, after a sickness of ten days, closed the 

 mortal career of Alexander Wilson, on the twenty-third of 

 August, 1813. 



It may not be going too far to maintain, that in no age or na- 

 tion has there ever arisen one more eminently qualified for a 

 naturalist than the subject of these memoirs. Pie was not only 



* Wilson made six journies to the coast of New Jersey, in pursuit of wa- 

 ter birds, which abound in the neighbourhood of Great Egg-Harbour. 

 VOL. I. X 



