62 AI^XANDER WIIvSON : POET-NATURAI.IST 



clature. In March, 1804, less than five years before 

 the appearance of the first volume of the "American 

 Ornithology," Wilson sent to Bartram a collection 

 of bird-drawings, which he had made, with the re- 

 quest that he should write their names under them, 

 as, with the exception of three or four, he did not 

 know them. Yet even then the idea of his monu- 

 mental work was beginning to take some shape in 

 his mind, for as early as June, 1803, he wrote to 

 Thomas Crichton, "I have had many pursuits since 

 I left Scotland — Mathematics, the German Lan- 

 guage, Music, Drawing, etc., and now I am about 

 to make a collection of all our finest birds." The 

 idea once in his head was not to leave him. Five 

 days in the week he had no time to spare from his 

 bread-earning school duties, but the other two, with 

 little regard for his ever-weakening health, he sacri- 

 ficed to the "itch for drawing" which he says he 

 had caught from Alexander Lawson. It was Law- 

 son to whom he wrote in March, 1804, that he meant 

 to carry out his plan "of making a collection of all 

 the birds in this part of North America." He 

 granted that the plan was Quixotic, a sort of "brain 

 windmill," but it was to him one of his "earthly 

 comforts." 



There were before him, however, long years of 

 trial and struggle, of study of American birds pri- 

 marily, and secondarily of American people, before 

 he was at last to realize his ambitions and become 

 famous as the American Ornithologist. 



