cxc 
LIFE OF WILSON. 
As far as I can learn he had access but to two systems of Or- 
nithology, that of Linneus, as translated by Dr. Turton, and the 
‘‘General Synopsis” of Dr. Latham.* The arrangement of the 
latter he adopted in his “ General Index” of Land Birds, appended 
to the sixth volume ; and he intended to pursue the same system 
for the Water Birds, at the conclusion of his work. 
The nature of his plan prevented him from proceeding in re- 
gular order, according to the system adopted, it being his intention 
to publish as fast as the materials accumulated; and he being in 
some measure compelled, by motives of economy, to apportion his 
figures to the space they would occupy in the plates, he thereby 
brings to our view birds not only of diflferent genera but of differ- 
ent habits, associated in a manner not wholly unnatural, but abhor- 
rent from the views of those sytematists who account every devia- 
tion from method an inexcusable fault. 
With the art of perspective, it would appear, he was imper- 
fectly acquainted ; hence there are errors in his drawings which 
the rigid critic cannot overlook. These errors occur most fre- 
quently in the feet and the tails of his birds, the latter of which, 
with the view of being characteristically displayed, are frequently 
distorted in a manner which no expediency can justify. One can 
hardly forbear smiling at the want of correspondence between the 
figure of the Sharp-shinned Hawk, and the fence upon which it is 
mounted, the former, instead of appearing of the size of nature, for 
which the author intended it, absolutely assuming the bulk of an 
elephant. 
* The library of Wilson occupied but a small space. On casting my eyes, after his de- 
cease, over the ten or a dozen volumes of which it was composed, I was grieved to find that 
he had been the owner of only one work on Ornithology, and that was Bewick’s British Birds. 
For the use of the first volume of Turton’s Linneus he was indebted to the friendship of Mr. 
Thomas Say ; the Philadelphia Library supplied him with Latham. 
