DELAWARE VALLEY ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 5 



were in the possession of Mrs. Elizabeth Gray of Edinburgh, 

 Scotland and were originally presented to her husband Robert 

 Gray by his friend Wm, P. Turnbull. Among them were a 

 long letter from Wilson to Miss Sarah Miller dated Nashville, 

 Tenn., May 1, 1810, which was published in 'Poems and Liter- 

 ary Prose of Alexander Wilson ' by Alex. B. Grosart 1876, pp. 

 203-206 ; the negative of Wilson's Silhouette (the original is 

 now in the National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh); a colored 

 drawing of the Hermit Thrush, under glass with the following 

 inscription on the back ; ' This drawing by Alexr. Wilson (and 

 cut b}'- him so as to occupy its place in the plate) being part of 

 the contents of his trunk, left by his will to Miss Sarah Miller 

 who afterward married a Rittenhouse) and purchased by me 

 from her son's widow E. R. Rittenhouse, William P. Turnbull, 

 Phila. 1866.' " 



No one realizes better than I the comparatively trivial nature 

 of the items I have described, but ever}'- scrap of information 

 about such men as Wilson seems worthy of our notice. If 

 onl}^ as an excuse to bring to our attention for a moment the 

 man and his work, they have perhaps served a good pur- 

 pose. The impetus that such a work as Wilson's produced in 

 America and by the support of American subscribers gave to 

 American science is hard to estimate, as is also the attention 

 that it must have directed toward America, as a country which 

 not only possessed a rich fauna and flora, but which gave prom- 

 ise of producing men thoroughly capable of making known its 

 riches to the scientific world, and in the van of this assem- 

 blage will ever stand Alexander Wilson, a Scotchman by birth 

 but an American in his interests and sympathies. 



