LIFE OF WILSON. xxiii 
which grew into an uncommon friendship, and continued with- 
out the least abatement until severed by death. Here it was 
that Wilson found himself translated, if we may so speak, into 
a new existence. He had long been a lover of the works of 
Nature, and had derived more happiness from the contempla- 
tion of her simple beauties, than from any other source of gra- 
tification. But he had hitherto been a mere novice; he was 
now about to receive instructions from one, whom the expe- 
rience of a long life, spent in travel and rural retirement, had 
rendered qualified to teach. Mr. Bartram soon perceived the 
bent of his friend’s mind, and its congeniality to his own; and 
took every pains to encourage him in a study, which, while it 
expands the faculties, and purifies the heart, insensibly leads to 
the contemplation of the glorious Author of nature himself. 
From his youth Wilson had been an observer of the manners 
of birds; and since his arrival in America he had found them 
objects of uncommon interest; but he had not yet viewed them 
with the eye of a naturalist. 
Mr. Bartram possessed some works on natural history, par- 
ticularly those of Catesby and Edwards. Wilson perused them 
attentively; and found himself enabled, even with his slender 
stock of information, to detect errors and absurdities into which 
these authors had fallen, from a defective mode of studying 
nature: a mode, which, while it led them to the repositories of 
dried skins and preparations, and to a reliance on hearsay evi- 
dence, subjected them to the imputation of ignorance, which 
their lives, devoted to the cultivation and promotion of science, 
certainly would not justify. Wilson’s improvement was now 
rapid; and the judicious criticisms which he made on the above- 
mentioned authors, gratified his friend and instructor, who re- 
doubled his encouraging assistance, in order to further him in 
a pursuit for which his genius, now beginning to develop it- 
self, was evidently fitted. 
