LIFE OF WILSON. 
cix 
that the ladies hardly ever speak or smile, bat dance with as much 
gravity as if they were performing some ceremony of devotion. On 
the contrary the negro wenches are all sprightliness and gaiety ; 
and if report be not a defamer — {Iiere there is a hiatus in the manu- 
script) which render the men callous to all the finer sensations of 
love, and female excellence. 
“ I will not detain you by a recital of my journey from Charles- 
ton to Savannah. In crossing the Savannah riv^er, at a place call- 
ed the Two Sisters’ Ferry, my horse threw himself into the torrent, 
and had I not, at the risk of my own life, rescued him, would have 
been drowned.” 
Of the first volume of the Ornithology only two hundred co- 
0 
pies had been printed. But it was now thought expedient to strike 
oflf a new edition of three hundred more ; as the increasing appro- 
bation of the public warranted the expectation of corresponding 
support. 
Fo Mr. WM. BARTRAM. 
Philadelphia^ Jlugust 4, 1809. 
‘■‘The second volume of “American Ornithology” being now 
nearly ready to go to press, and the plates in considerable forward- 
ness, you will permit me to trespass on your time, for a few mo- 
ments, by inquiring if you have any thing interesting to add to the 
history of the following birds, the figures of which will be found in 
this volume. 
^ ^ 
“ I have myself already said every thing of the foregoing that 
my own observations suggested, or that I have been enabled to col- 
lect from those on whom I could rely. As it has fallen to my lot 
to be the biographer of the feathered tribes of the United States, I 
am solicitous to do full justice to every species ; and I would not 
2 E 
VOL. IX. 
