ALEXANDER WILSON. x i 



like the Indian and buffalo, have been compelled to yield to the 

 destructive ingenuity of the white settlers." * 



In those rapid changes, then, appearing to our view slow from 

 their constancy, we should be in danger of losing all trace of some 

 species, or of possessing a tradition or description, valuable only 

 according to the station which the author of it at the time held in 

 the science he professed. In this respect, the ornithology of North 

 America has been most fortunate. Her naturalists have wrought 

 from observations, the fruits of their own laborious researches, and 

 have not trusted to the hearsay evidence of their predecessors ; and 

 the species of that continent are at this time better known than 

 those of any part of the world, northern Europe excepted. Passing 

 from the more primitive ornithologists, from Edwards and Catesby, 

 embracing in their histories the birds of the islands belonging to 

 the southern continent, and also from the gentlemen engaged in the 

 fur establishments, who furnished our earliest information regard- 

 ing the more arctic inhabitants, we find, in the United States, the 

 venerable Bartram and the elder Peale, warm admirers of nature in 

 all her forms, paving the way for the favourable reception of the 

 arduous, and then novel, labours of our countryman, Alexander 

 Wilson. He was the first who truly studied the birds of North 

 America in their natural abodes, and from real observation ; and 

 his work will remain an ever-to-be-admired testimony of enthusiasm 

 and perseverance — one certainly unrivalled in descriptions ; and if 

 some plates and illustrations may vie with it in finer workmanship 

 or pictorial splendour, few, indeed, can rival it in fidelity and truth 

 of delineation. Since his untimely decease, the labours of his 

 admirable continuator and commentator, the Prince of Musignano, 

 of Mr Ord, and the younger Peale, and the extensive journeys of 

 Messrs Say and Long to the interior and the Rocky Mountains, 

 have done much to fill up what was wanting to this deparment of 

 the fauna of North America ; while the materials collected, during 

 the different arctic expeditions, undertaken by this country, and 

 particularly the last overland, under the charge of Captain Sir J. 

 Franklin, have brought down our knowledge to the present date, 

 and are beautifully illustrated in the important second volume of 

 the " Northern Zoology," by Dr Richardson, and Mr Swainson. 

 * Bonap. Continuation, Part I. p. 80. 



