cxcviii LIFE OF WILSON. 



formances, which are undistinguished by any fact, which might 

 prove that their authors are entitled to any other praise than 

 that of diligent compilers. But in the work before us, we are 

 presented with a fund of information of so uncommon a kind, 

 so various, and so interesting, that we are at no loss to perceive 

 that the whole is the result of personal application, directed to 

 the only legitimate source of knowledge Nature, not as she 

 appears in the cabinet of the collector, but as she reveals her- 

 self in all the grace and loveliness of animated existence. 



Independent of those pleasing descriptions, which will al- 

 ways ensure the work a favourable reception, it has higher 

 claims to our regard, by the philosophical view which it takes 

 of those birds which mankind had, with one consent, proscribed 

 as noxious, but which now we are induced to consider as aux- 

 iliaries in agriculture, whose labours could not be dispensed 

 with without detriment. A vagrant chicken, now and then, 

 may well be spared to the hawk or owl who clears our fields 

 of swarms of destructive mice; the woodpecker, whose taste 

 induces him to appropriate to himself the first ripe apple or 

 cherry, has well earned the delicacy, by the myriads of pesti- 

 lential worms of which he has rid our orchards, and whose 

 ravages, if not counteracted, would soon deprive us of all fruit; 

 if the crow and the black-bird be not too greedy, we may sure- 

 ly spare them a part of what they have preserved to us, since 

 it is questionable, if their fondness for grubs or cut-worms did 

 not induce them to destroy these enemies of the maize, whether 

 or not a single stalk of this inestimable corn would be allowed 

 to greet the view of the American farmer. 



The beauties of this work are so transcendent, that its faults, 

 which are, in truth, mere peccadillos, are hardly perceptible; 

 they may be corrected by one of ordinary application, who 

 needs not invoke to his aid either much learning or much in- 

 telligence. A book superior in its typographical execution, 

 and graphical illustrations, it would be no difficult matter to 

 produce, since the ingenuity of man has advanced the fine arts 

 to a state of perfection, sufficient to gratify the most fastidious 



