LIFE OF WILSON. clxxxi 



eral and lasting advantage, which will always overbalance the 

 slow improvements of gradual correction." 



As it must be obvious that, without books, it would be im- 

 possible to avoid error in synonymes and nomenclature, so we 

 find that our author, in these respects, has rendered himself ob- 

 noxious to reproach. 



That he was not ambitious of the honour of forming new ge- 

 nera, appears from the circumstance, that, although he found the 

 system of Latham needed reformation, yet he ventured to pro- 

 pose but one genus, the Curvirostra, the characters of which 

 are so obvious, that one is astonished that so learned an orni- 

 thologist as Latham, should have contented himself with arrang- 

 ing the species appertaining to it with others, the conformation 

 of whose bills are so dissimilar. It may be necessary to state 

 that the Crossbills had been erected into a separate genus, un- 

 der the denomination of Crucirostra, by an author whose works 

 Wilson had no knowledge of; and I have reason to believe that 

 even the generic appellation of Curvirostra had been anticipa- 

 ted, by a writer on the ornithology of the northern parts of Eu- 

 rope. Brisson limited his genus Loxia to the Crossbills, and 

 this judicious restriction appears to be now sanctioned by all 

 naturalists of authority. 



There is a species of learning, which is greatly affected by 

 puny minds, and for which our author entertained the most 

 hearty contempt: this is the names by which certain nations 

 of Indians designated natural objects. Hence we no where find 

 his work disfigured by those " uncouth and unmanageable 

 words," which some writers have recorded with a solemnity, 

 which should seem to prove a conviction of their importance; 

 but which, in almost every instance, are a reproach to their 

 vanity and their ignorance. Can any thing be more preposte- 

 rous than for one to give a catalogue of names in a language, 

 the grammatical construction of which has never been ascer- 

 tained, and with the idiom of which one is totally unacquaint- 

 ed? Among literate nations it is a rule, which has received the 

 sanction of prescription, that when one would write upon a 



