218 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 
in an edition of 200 copies. Wilson immediately started 
on a canvassing tour of New England, in the course of 
which he visited the principal towns and colleges, going 
east to Portland, Maine, and as far north as Dartmouth 
College, in New Hampshire, where President John 
Wheelock and the professors received him with marked 
attention. On this journey Wilson did not average one 
subscriber a day, and he was forced to conclude that he 
had “been mistaken in publishing a work too good for 
the country”; “it is a fault,” he said, “not likely to be 
repeated, and will pretty severely correct itself.” Dan- 
iel D. Tompkins, Governor of New York, coolly said 
to him: “I would not give one hundred dollars for all 
the birds you intend to describe,” not even if “I had them 
alive’; but a future Governor of that State, De Witt 
Clinton, the friend of science and scientific men, gave 
him the substantial encouragement he craved. When 
his second volume was ready for issue, Wilson wrote to 
Bartram: “This undertaking has involved me in dif_i- 
culties and expenses which I never dreamt of, and I 
have never yet received one cent from it. I am, there- 
fore, a volunteer in the cause of Natural History im- 
pelled by nobler views than those of money.” 
In the autumn of 1808 Wilson made a long and 
arduous tour of the South, in the course of which he 
visited every important town along the southern Atlan- 
tic seaboard, and though it cost him dear, he obtained 
Orleans in seventeen days gave him 60 subscribers; Europe supplied 15, 
among whom were William Roscoe, later a patron of Audubon, and 
Benjamin West, the artist. Wilson figured and described 278 species of 
American birds (within the limits of the United States), of which 56 
were supposed to be new, and the total number, given by Wilson and 
Ord, is said to be 320. Twenty-three species were erroneously supposed 
to be identical with their European counterparts, yet all of Wilson’s birds 
except the “Small-headed Flycatcher,” referred to at the end of this 
chapter, have been identified. Considering the time and the difficulties 
under which he labored, his mistakes were remarkably few. 
