114 ALEXANDER WILSON: POE^-NATURAUST 



country and the alluring thirst for fame. If am- 

 bition be a sin, then he had sinned deeply, for in 

 company with great men and with angels he was 

 possessed of this "last infirmity of noble minds." 

 We shall hardly blame him for this, for though 

 there is an ambition of avarice and pride there is 

 also an ambition of love and service. Even as it 

 should be, the battles of his brave life ended in 

 victory, and if he received not the palm in life, 

 it was at least laid in death upon his tomb, and it 

 was this after all that he most desired : that he 

 might accomplish something by which posterity 

 might know that he had lived. A psean of praise 

 and commendation of his work went up after his 

 death; his "Ornithology" carried his fame over 

 Europe and everywhere was hailed as a great 

 achievement. The Edinburgh Review commented 

 on it with what for that staid publication may be 

 called enthusiasm ; the North American Reviezv 

 copied this notice; and article after article ap- 

 peared in other magazines. In his own town of 

 Paisley the house which had replaced his birth- 

 place was marked with a memorial slab and a 

 monument was erected to his honor. 



What Wilson's final rank as a scientist shall be, 

 must be left for the scientific world to decide, but 

 it is safe to say it will be no insignificant one. 

 Excluding the little work which William Bartram 

 and Thomas Jefferson had done in ornithology, 

 Wilson was the pioneer worker among the Ameri- 

 can birds. Prince Charles Lucian Bonaparte, 

 who corrected some of Wilson's mistakes of 

 nomenclature, declared that it was a most extra- 



