882 



mouths it is heard in tho groves, when it makes a noise- 

 like the tiling" of a saw, from •which it receives its name." 

 This account of the Whet-saw and Wakon bird have been 

 deemed reliable and correct, by some persons for more tlian 

 one hundred years. It was pul)lished in several editions 

 of Dr. Morse's Geography, when it was used as a read- 

 ing book in our conniion schools. In tlie sixth edition of 

 the abo^■e work in two large volumes, a list of our birds 

 filling eight pages was furnished by Kev. Dr. Cutler of Hamil- 

 ton. In Catesbv's list we find 95 species. In Jefferson's 

 124. l.i Belknap's 121, and in Bartram's 215. In the 2d 

 edition of Guthrie's Geography, }»ublished in 1815, Mr. 

 George ( )rd furnished for the work, a list of tlie systematic 

 names of North American animals, as far as known, followed 

 by sliort notices of the more interesting species. His list 

 of birds and descriptions compose 100 species. We have 

 now come down to that ])criod when the father of American 

 ornithology, Alexander Wilson, landed upon our shores at 

 Newcastle, a poor wanderer, directing liis steps to Philadel- 

 pliia on foot, distant altout thirty-three miles, with his gun 

 upon his slioulder. The first bird, that he saw, was a Red- 

 headed Woodpecker, which he shot, and considered it the 

 most beautiful bird he had ever beheld. Tlie 1st volume of 

 Wilson's great work appeared in Sept. 1808, the 7th and 

 last volume in 1818. He was busily engaged in completing 

 his 8th volume, when he was overtaken by disease, the dys- 

 entery, and after a sickness of ten days, he died on the 28d 

 of August in the 17th year of his age. In October 1808, 

 Wilson visited Salem and was the guest of the Rev. Dr. 

 Prince . He says, " Salem is a neat little town . The wharves 

 were crowded with vessels One wharf here is twenty hun- 

 dred and twenty-two feet long. I staid here two days, and 

 set oif for Newburyport, through a rocky, uncultivated, 

 sterile country." 



As the American Ornithology of Wilson was incomplete 

 at his death, Charles Lucien Buonaparte published, a con- 

 tinuation of the work, containing figures and descriptions of 

 all birds discovered since his time. John J. Audubon fol- 

 lowed Wilson in the study of our Ornithology, and com- 

 menced publishing his splendid work on the Birds of America, 

 in 1885, and finished it in 1889 in five volumes. His plates 

 are larger and more beautifully colored than those of any 

 American Ornithologist, Initliis descriptions and observations 



