Page:Ornithological biography, or an account of the habits of the birds of the United States of America, vol 2.djvu/599



Shortly after the death of Wilson, one of the wise men of a certain city in the United States, assured the members of a Natural History Society there, that no more birds would be found in the country than had been described by that justly celebrated writer. Had the assertions however been made in the hearing of that ornithologist, he would doubtless at once have refuted the speech of this extraordinary orator, who continued as follows:— "No more Finches, no more Hawks, no more Owls, no more Herons, and certainly no more Pigeons; and as to Water birds, let the list given by Wilson of such as he has not described be filled, and again I say, there wiU end the American Ornithology." The orator has travelled much, having gone a few miles to the eastward of his own city, and even crossed the Mississippi ; but as he had predicted, he never discovered a bird in all his wanderings. Time passed on, and the orator has dreamed over it ; but several industrious students of nature, doubting if all that he had said might really be strictly correct to the letter, have followed in the track of Wilson, have extended their investigations, ransacked the deep recesses of the forests and the great western plains, visited the shores of the Atlantic, ascended our noble streams, and explored our broadest lakes ; — and, reader, they have found more new birds than the learned academician probably knew of old ones. Then, be not surprised when I assure you that our Bonapartes, our Ndttalls, our Bachmans, our Coopers, Pickerings, Townsends, Peals, and other zealous naturalists, have very considerably augmented the Fauna of the United States. To the list of these amiable men may be added the names of learned and enterprising Europeans — Parry, Franklin, Richardson, Ross, Duummond, and others, who with a zeal equalled only by that of Wilson himself, have crossed the broad Atlantic, and made discoveries in ornithology in portions of North America, never before visited, in which they have met with species that, although previously unknown to us, have since been found to traverse the whole