cxcviii life of WILSON. 
formances, 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 her- 
self in all the grace and loveliness of animated existence. 
Independent of those pleasing descriptions, which will al- 
ways 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 aux- 
iliaries 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 the myriads of pesti- 
lential 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, we may sure- 
ly 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 of the maize, whether 
or not a single stalk of this inestimable corn would be allowed 
to greet the view of the American farmer. 
The beauties of this work are so transcendent, that its faults, 
which are, in truth, mere peccadillos, are hardly perceptible; 
they may be corrected by one of ordinary application, who 
needs not invoke to his aid either much learning or much in- 
telligence. A book superior in its typographical execution, 
and graphical illustrations, it would be no difficult matter to 
produce, since the ingenuity of man has advanced the fine arts 
to a state of perfection, sufficient to gratify the most fastidious 
