[182] For "The Shark, or Lang Mills Detected," a satire directed against William Sharp, a manufacturer of Paisley; Wilson was fined £12 13s. 6d.
[183] See [Bibliography, No. 43].
[184] At Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on October 3, 1799, Alexander Wilson sent George Simpson, Esq., a State Treasurer's check in favor of Joseph Brown for $475, to be entered to the credit of Mr. Brown as one installment on 38 shares of scrip in the new loan at eight per cent, in the names of Thomas Eyes, 14 shares; Alexander Wilson, 14 shares; and Kenneth Sewell, 10 shares.
[185] This was the American edition of Abraham Rees' revision of Ephraim Chambers' Cyclopædia, which had appeared in London in 1728; it was published at Philadelphia, in forty-one quarto volumes of text and six volumes of plates, by Samuel F. Bradford and the Messrs. Murray, Fairman & Company, 1810-1824.
[186] "The types," said Charles Robert Leslie, "which were very beautiful, were cast in America, and though at that time paper was largely imported, he [Mr. Bradford] determined that the paper should be of American manufacture; and I remember that Ames, the paper maker, carried his patriotism so far that he declared that he would use only American rags in making it." (Autobiographical Recollections, Boston, 1860.)
[187] The American Ornithology: or, the Natural History of the Birds of the United States: Illustrated with Plates Engraved and Colored from Original Drawings taken from Nature, by Alexander Wilson, was published in nine imperial quarto volumes by Messrs. Bradford and Inskeep, at Philadelphia, 1808-1814. Each volume contained nine plates and from 100 to 167 pages of text, exclusive of prefatory and other matter. The eighth volume, which was nearly ready for press at the time of the author's death, was edited by George Ord, Wilson's friend and executor; the final volume, which was wholly by Ord, and which was issued in the same year, contained a life of Wilson. After the appearance of the initial volume, the edition was extended to 500 copies and the first volume was entirely reset. Ord's life of Wilson was expanded for a three-volume edition of the Ornithology, and from oversheets of this work was produced as a separate volume in 1828 (see [Note, Vol. I, p. 223]).
Wilson's published lists of subscribers show 449 names, calling for 458 copies, more than half of which were taken by residents of Pennsylvania, New York and Louisiana; 70 were subscribed for in Philadelphia, chiefly by business men, artists, and "those in the middle class of society;" New Orleans in seventeen days gave him 60 subscribers; Europe supplied 15, among whom were William Roscoe, later a patron of Audubon, and Benjamin West, the artist. Wilson figured and described 278 species of American birds (within the limits of the United States), of which 56 were supposed to be new, and the total number, given by Wilson and Ord, is said to be 320. Twenty-three species were erroneously supposed to be identical with their European counterparts, yet all of Wilson's birds except the "Small-headed Flycatcher," referred to at the end of this chapter, have been identified. Considering the time and the difficulties under which he labored, his mistakes were remarkably few.
[188] See [Vol. I, p. 340].
[189] See a letter to Professor S. S. Haldeman, dated February 6, 1879, in Penn Monthly, vol. x (Philadelphia, 1879).
[190] Ornithological Biography ([Bibl. No. 2]), vol. i, p. 437.