LIFE OF WILSON. clxxxi 
eral and lasting advantage, which will always overbalance the 
slow improvements of gradual correction.” 
As it must he obvious that, without books, it would be im- 
possible to avoid error in synonymes and nomenclature, so we 
find that our author, in these respects, has rendered himself ob- 
noxious to reproach. 
That he was not ambitious of the honour of forming new ge- 
nera, appears from the circumstance, that, although he found the 
system of Latham needed reformation, yet he ventured to pro- 
pose but one genus, the Curvirostra, the characters of which 
are so obvious, that one is astonished that so learned an orni- 
thologist as Latham, should have contented himself with arrang- 
ing the species appertaining to it with others, the conformation 
of whose bills are so dissimilar. It may be necessary to state 
that the Crossbills had been erected into a separate genus, un- 
der the denomination of Crucirostra, by an author whose works 
Wilson had no knowledge of; and I have reason to believe that 
even the generic appellation of Curvirostra had been anticipa- 
ted, by a writer on the ornithology of the northern parts of Eu- 
rope. Brisson limited his genus Loxia to the Crossbills, and 
this judicious restriction appears to be now sanctioned by all 
naturalists of authority. 
There is a species of learning, which is greatly afiected by 
puny minds, and for which our author entertained the most 
hearty contempt: this is the names by which certain nations 
of Indians designated natural objects. Hence we no where find 
his work disfigured by those “ uncouth and unmanageable 
words,” which some writers have recorded with a solemnity, 
which should seem to prove a conviction of their importance; 
but which, in almost every instance, are a reproach to their 
vanity and their ignorance. Can any thing be more preposte- 
rous than for one to give a catalogue of names in a language, 
the grammatical construction of which has never been ascer- 
tained, and with the idiom of which one is totally unacquaint- 
ed? Among literate nations it is a rule, which has received the 
sanction of prescription, that when one would write upon a 
