LIFE OF WILSON. 
CCIX 
more certain aim, descends like a whirlwind, snatches it in his 
grasp ere it reaches the water, and bears his ill-gotten booty silent- 
ly away to the woods.” 
Perhaps there is no similar work extant which can so justly 
lay claim to the merit of originality as Wilson’s Ornithology. In 
books on natural history, in general, we rarely meet with much 
that is new ; and it is not unusual to behold laboured performances, 
which are undistinguished by any fact which might prove that 
their authors are entitled to any other praise than that of diligent 
compilers. But in the work before us we are presented with a 
fund of information of so uncommon a kind, so various, and so 
interesting, that we are at no loss to perceive that the whole is the 
result of personal application, directed to the only legitimate source 
of knowledge — Nature, not as she appears in the cabinet of the 
collector, but as she reveals herself in all the grace and loveliness 
of animated existence. 
Independent of those pleasing descriptions, which will always 
ensure the work a favourable reception, it has higher claims to our 
regard by the philosophical view which it takes of those birds 
which mankind had, with one consent, proscribed as noxious, but 
which now we are induced to consider as auxiliaries in agriculture, 
whose labours could not be dispensed with without detriment. A 
vagrant chicken, now and then, may well be spared to the Hawk 
or Owl who clears our fields of swarms of destructive mice ; the 
Woodpecker, whose taste induces him to appropriate to himself 
the first ripe apple or cherry, has well earned the delicacy by tlie 
myriads of pestilential worms of which he has rid our orchards, 
and whose ravages, if not counteracted, would soon deprive us of 
all fruit ; if the Crow and the Black-bird be not too greedy, Ave 
may surely spare them a part of what they have preserved to us, 
since it is questionable, if their fondness for grubs or cut-worms 
did not induce them to destroy these enemies to the maize, whether 
3 G 
VOL. IX. 
