ALEXANDER WILSON. 
Ixxix 
cation, his friends failed not to admonish him ; but to 
their entreaties he would make this ominous reply, — 
“ Life is short, and without exertion nothing can be 
performed.” In the last letter which he is understood to 
have written to his friends in Paisley, after sympathizing 
with his correspondent on the death of a son, he makes 
the following melancholy statement regarding his own 
declining health : — “ I am myself far from being in good 
health. Intense application to study has hurt me much. 
My 8th volume is now in the press, and will be published 
in November. One volume more will complete the whole.” 
At length, amid these accumulated and harassing toils, 
he was assailed by a disease, which his vital powers were 
now too much enfeebled successfully to resist. The 
dysentery, his former foe, renewed its deadly assaults ; 
and after a few days’ illness, notwithstanding the combined 
efforts of science and friendship, terminated the mortal 
career of Alexander Wilson, the American Ornithologist, 
on the 23d of August, 1813, consequently in the 48th 
year of his age.* “ The moment,” says his brother, who 
had a few years previously joined him in America, “ that 
I heard of his sickness, I went to the city, and found 
him speechless : I caught his hand : he seemed to know 
me, and that was all. He died next morning, at nine 
o’clock, and was buried next day with all the honours due 
to his merit. The whole of the scientific characters, 
along with the clergy of all denominations, attended the 
funeral. The Columbia Society of Fine Arts, of which 
he was a member, walked in procession before the hearse, 
* The following was stated as the more immediate cause of 
Wilson’s final illness, by one of his American friends, who 
Visited Scotland some years ago : — While he was sitting in the 
house of one of his friends, enjoying the pleasures of conversation, 
he chanced to see a bird of a rare species, for one of which he 
had long been in search. With his usual enthusiasm he ran 
out, followed it, swam across a river, over which it had down, 
fired at, killed, and obtained the object of his eager pursuit ; but 
caught a cold, which, bringing on dysentery, ended in his death. 
