Under a Wild Sky, page 38
19In winter months they were joined Personal communication with Nate Rice, Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, January 22, 2003.
19Jean Audubon continued Ford, John James Audubon, page 4.
19Seeking his fortune Ibid., pages 4–9.
19In the spring of 1789 Ibid., pages 18–19.
20With only 35,000 French colonists Stoddard, The French Revolution in San Domingo, pages 21, 50.
20They blamed the sudden instability Ibid., page 82.
20Those who didn’t leave Ibid., pages 349–50.
20Finally, he arranged passage Ford, John James Audubon, pages 22–23.
20Three years later Ibid., page 29.
20He was sent to school Herrick, Audubon the Naturalist, pages 93–96.
20In March 1803 Ford, John James Audubon, page 36.
20Audubon dispatched an agent Ibid., pages 36–37.
21When he walked down Ibid., page 37.
21Despite a modest first printing Burns, Poems in Scots and English (Introduction by Donald A. Low), pages xix–xxxi.
21One of them was Cantwell, Alexander Wilson, page 15.
21It seemed that everyone in Paisley Hunter, The Life and Letters of Alexander Wilson, page 31.
21Now a suburb of Glasgow Cantwell, Alexander Wilson, pages 15–16.
21It was also a hub Ibid.
21As much as half the tea Ibid., page 34.
21But it was cloth making Hunter, The Life and Letters of Alexander Wilson, pages 16–17.
21Many of them belonged to Cantwell, Alexander Wilson, page 16.
22As a boy, Wilson was called Sandy Ibid., pages 15–16.
22He was thin, but grew tall Ibid., pages 16–17.
22The Wilson family fortunes Ibid., pages 23–24.
22Young Sandy, who was bright Ibid., page 21.
22His father quickly remarried Ibid., page 27.
22He much preferred reading Ibid.
22At thirteen, Wilson accepted Ibid., page 28.
22When his father renewed Ibid., pages 28–29.
22Nobody knew for sure Ibid., page 30.
22Wilson visited his family Ibid., page 29.
22He took up hunting Ibid., page 31.
22He developed a love of poetry Hunter, The Life and Letters of Alexander Wilson, pages 29–31; and Cantwell, Alexander Wilson, page 43.
22He took a job in a weaving shop Cantwell, Alexander Wilson, page 44.
22When business was good Ibid., page 45.
23Respected Sir Wilson to David Brodie, December 31, 1788. In Hunter, The Life and Letters of Alexander Wilson, pages 123–25. As is true of much of the Wilson and Audubon correspondence, this letter begat numerous subsequent reproductions. The original is in the Paisley Museum and Art Galleries in Scotland. A transcription is in the Houghton Library at Harvard. In addition to Clark Hunter’s published version, cited here, there is also Alexander Grosart’s in The Poems and Literary Prose of Alexander Wilson, from 1876. Infrequent discrepancies, mostly minor adjustments to spelling and punctuation, exist among the various forms of all the letters I examined from Wilson, Audubon, and others. Hunter also reports that the transcript of this letter at Harvard, which I did not look at, is missing the second verse. However, such a notable error strikes me as unusual. In direct comparisons of hundreds of original documents alongside their published counterparts, I found the different versions scarcely different at all.
23When Wilson was broke Cantwell, Alexander Wilson, page 45.
23Wilson was an eager sightseer Ibid.
24The Wintry West extends his blast Burns, “Winter, A Dirge,” Poems in Scots and English, page 89.
24Unlike Burns, his vocabulary Cantwell, Alexander Wilson, page 46.
24The way a drop of water Wilson to David Brodie, December 31, 1788. In Hunter, The Life and Letters of Alexander Wilson, pages 123–25.
24He fell in love with a woman Cantwell, Alexander Wilson, pages 52–53.
24In Wilson’s mind Ibid., page 59.
25Encouraged to publish Ibid., pages 57–58.
25Wilson had to beg forgiveness Ibid., page 58.
25But he complained Wilson to David Brodie, January 5, 1791. In Hunter, The Life and Letters of Alexander Wilson.
25He fell ill Cantwell, Alexander Wilson, page 60.
25Weavers in Scotland were beginning Ibid., page 65.
25One of these poems resulted in Ibid.
25He placed second in a speech contest Ibid., page 63.
25Wilson then did something Ibid., pages 64–72. This peculiar episode, including the clumsiness of Wilson’s attempted extortion and the murky details of his subsequent imprisonments, has puzzled Wilson scholars for two centuries. But Alexander Grosart—along with George Ord, a sympathetic Wilson biographer—argued that Wilson was neither a blackmailer nor a seditionist, but was instead guilty only of living in politically charged times. Brushing aside Wilson’s admission of extortion, Grosart insisted that Wilson’s satirical attacks on Paisley loom owners were entirely justified, as the lot of them were “local self-importances and petty tyrants,” whose exploitation of their workers warranted exposure. Wilson, he said, had merely given voice to “truisms of civil and religious freedom” that were held then to be threats to the monarchy.
26Over the course of many months Hunter, The Life and Letters of Alexander Wilson, pages 53–60.
26Ironically, it was at this time Cantwell, Alexander Wilson, page 75.
26Jail, he said Wilson to David Brodie, May 21, 1793. In Hunter, The Life and Letters of Alexander Wilson, page 147.
27During one of his releases Ibid., pages 59–61.
27“I must get out of my mind” Quoted in Cantwell, Alexander Wilson, page 79.
27They’d gone first to Belfast Wilson to his parents, July 25, 1794. In Hunter, The Life and Letters of Alexander Wilson. This long, action-packed letter was written home shortly after Wilson’s arrival in Philadelphia. It proclaimed, emphatically, the start of a new life in the New World.
27After fifty days at sea Ibid.
28Mulling what to do next Ibid.
28One day he shot several cardinals Ibid. At least I believe they must have been cardinals. Wilson said only that he shot some “red birds.” When he wrote the natural history of the cardinal some years later, the species had been exported to Europe and was becoming known on the other side of the ocean. Oddly, Cantwell insists that the birds Wilson killed on this occasion were red-headed woodpeckers—a tri-colored species that even the most careless observer would not likely describe as a “red bird.”
3. A NAME FOR EVERY LIVING THING
29Most of the country’s Scordato, The New York Public Library Desk Reference, page 866.
29Thomas Jefferson’s purchase of Ibid.
30European naturalists, disinclined to let Porter, The Eagle’s Nest, pages 1–11.
30Inevitably, the same principles Ibid.
30Linnaeus, the father of modern taxonomy Koerner, Linnaeus, page 15.
30A man of wide interests Ibid., pages 121–22. Linnaeus’s conviction that Mediterranean and even tropical flora could thrive in the near-arctic environment of Sweden was largely premised on a naïve assumption that the harshness of the Northern winter was offset by the long periods of daylight that occur in the summer at high latitudes. He was wrong. Linnaeus, and his worshipful students, believed plants could be “fooled” into adapting to different climatic conditions. But since Linnaeus did not believe in evolution, and only grudgingly accepted the principle of hybridization, he could never explain exactly how such adaptations would occur. Like so many frustrated pre-Darwinian naturalists, Linnaeus, by the end of his life, had begun to suspect that nature was more changeable than prevailing religious and scientific doctrine supposed.
30In the Linnaean system Ibid., pages 15–16.
30A thousand years before Linnaeus Barnes (ed.), The Complete Works of Aristotle, vol. I, page 774.
30He emphasized the importance Ibid.
30A close observer of animal behavior Ibid., page 781.
31“[W]e must take animals species by species” Ibid.
31For several decades Porter, The Eagle’s Nest, page 15.
31“The thing is” Koerner, Linnaeus, page 45.
31He estimated the total Ibid.
31There are something like Tudge, The Variety of Life, pages 6–7.
31Current guesses put the number Ibid., page 7.
31Beetles alone make up Ibid., page 304.
32As new species turned up Charlotte Porter, personal communication, November 21, 2002.
32In Linnaeus’s day Ibid. The emphasis on species as the primary units of biology in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is roughly analogous to the way we think today about the importance of genes. Identifying species was then fundamental to understanding the living world. The irony, of course, is that close study of species would one day lead to the concept of evolution. In her book, The Eagle’s Nest, and in her interview with me, Dr. Porter argues that American naturalists like Wilson and Audubon—who gave unprecedented weight to direct field observation in classifying species—were nudging science forward in a direction that would eventually undermine the belief that all of life on earth was determined at the moment of biblical Creation.
32“We count so many species” Koerner, Linnaeus, page 44.
32Linnaeus was sure these processes Ibid.
32The presence of plant and animal shapes Prothero, Bringing Fossils to Life, page 1.
33It was believed by some Ibid., pages 1–2.
33Speculation during the Middle Ages Ibid.
33Aristotle believed such fossils Ibid.
33Leonardo da Vinci thought Ibid., page 2.
33Linnaeus took a pragmatic view Ibid., page 4.
33All of this would have to be rethought Porter, “The Excursive Naturalists,” pages 11–14.
33Born in 1707 to a middle-class family Roger, Buffon, pages 3–43.
33In 1739, King Louis XV Ibid., pages 45–47.
33It was actually a well-organized academy Ibid., page 51.
33This work morphed into Ibid., page 79.
34Buffon endeavored to explain Porter, The Eagle’s Nest, page 15.
34Buffon thought the Linnaean system Roger, Buffon, pages 312–13.
34Nature, Buffon insisted Ibid., page 312.
34A species, Buffon decided Ibid., page 314.
34“The ass resembles the horse” Ibid.
34A species, Buffon said Ibid.
34Buffon’s Natural History was massive Porter, The Eagle’s Nest, page 15.
34Prior to writing the Natural History Roger, Buffon, pages 15–58.
35Intrigued by the story of Archimedes Ibid., pages 52–53.
35He believed the earth was much older Ibid., pages 106–15; and Porter, The Eagle’s Nest, page 16.
35Anticipating Darwinian evolution Porter, The Eagle’s Nest, page 16.
35European horticulturalists saw the botanical wealth Porter, “The Excursive Naturalists,” page 2.
35Buffon supposed that America Roger, Buffon, page 305.
36What was most remarkable to Buffon Ibid.
36The differences between Ibid.
36In the New World Quoted in Kastner, A Species of Eternity, page 122.
36“The air and the earth” Ibid.
36“These changes are made only slowly” Roger, Buffon, page 307.
36Buffon argued that Ibid., page 305.
37Although the savage Quoted in Waldstreicher (ed.), Notes on the State of Virginia by Thomas Jefferson, page 120.
37In 1705, a farmer mucking about Semonin, American Monster, page 15.
38It was sent to the Royal Society Ibid.
38Its president at the time Ibid., page 16.
38Cotton Mather, the influential Boston cleric Ibid., pages 27–40.
38Perhaps they came from large sea creatures Ibid., pages 42–43.
38Elephants, believed to have been Ibid., page 44.
38Even Isaac Newton still believed Ibid., page 60.
38There was growing interest in Ibid., page 62.
38In America it was dubbed Ibid., pages 62–63.
39One possible explanation Waldstreicher (ed.), Notes on the State of Virginia by Thomas Jefferson, pages 109–11.
39Meanwhile, a new term Ibid., pages 62–70.
39In 1739, a French military expedition Semonin, American Monster, page 87.
39Great herds of bison and deer and elk Ibid., page 109.
39They soon returned laden with Ibid., page 87.
39Benjamin Franklin, serving as Ibid., page 143.
40Interest in the fossils remained so high Ibid., pages 176–78.
40It was just before the end of the war Waldstreicher (ed.), Notes on the State of Virginia by Thomas Jefferson, page 16.
40In his book Ibid., pages 79–208. (Specific references can be found in Waldstreicher’s contents, pages viii–ix.)
40In his discussion of the people Ibid., pages 121–25.
40Emerging from revolution Ibid., pages 18–19.
40America, he believed Ibid., pages 20–21.
41Like other adherents Ibid.
41“Such is the economy of nature” Ibid., page 116.
41Mammoth remains hinted at Ibid., page 109.
42Jefferson thought there was only one Ibid., page 110.
42Jefferson was well versed in Ibid., pages 107–108.
42Some years later Kastner, A Species of Eternity, page 120.
42But to whatever animal we ascribe Waldstreicher (ed.), Notes on the State of Virginia by Thomas Jefferson, pages 110–11. Jefferson’s wonderful little book, considered in toto, was more than an enumeration of America’s natural riches and a defense against Buffon. Taking the long view, Jefferson argued that America—young, vital, and big—was in merely the early stages of its ascendancy, and that Europe, which was by contrast old and growing feeble, was in decline, even if nobody on the other side of the ocean could yet believe it.
43Jefferson prevailed on the governor Kastner, A Species of Eternity, page 125.
43He denounced Buffon’s Waldstreicher (ed.), Notes on the State of Virginia by Thomas Jefferson, page 121.
43This argument, especially Ibid., pages 175–81.
44Listing more than 120 species Ibid., page 127.
44Twenty years after Wilson to Thomas Jefferson, March 18, 1805. In Hunter, The Life and Letters of Alexander Wilson, pages 232–33.
4. LESSONS
45Only months before Cantwell, Alexander Wilson, page 120.
45Wilson acknowledged that Wilson to Thomas Jefferson, March 18, 1805. In Hunter, The Life and Letters of Alexander Wilson, pages 232–33. (The drawing at issue is reproduced in Kastner, A Species of Eternity, page 167.)
45The president was impressed Thomas Jefferson to Wilson, April 7, 1805. Ibid.
46As for the bird that so beguiled Wilson to William Bartram, July 2, 1805. Ibid.
46With the dawn Wilson, American Ornithology, vol. II, page 107.
47In the summer of 1803 Wilson to Thomas Crichton, June 1, 1803. In Hunter, The Life and Letters of Alexander Wilson, page 203.
47In the summer of 1794 Weigley et al., Philadelphia, pages 190–91.
47The fever was a terrifying Ibid., page 180.
47Many who left did so Ibid., page 182.
48Rush thought that a great load of ruined coffee Ibid., pages 180–81.
48In reeking hospitals the dying and the dead Simon, “Houses and Early Life in Philadelphia.” Simon quotes at length from the diary account of Elizabeth Drinker, a Philadelphia resident who lived through the epidemic. Drinker, like everyone else in the city, was horrified by conditions at an estate called Bush Hill, which had been turned into a temporary hospital and which soon became a “great slaughter house.” Anyone even mildly ill who was taken to Bush Hill regarded this as “the seal of death.” Ironically, Bush Hill was eventually cleaned up and turned into a model of proper sanitation and more effective treatments for the fever.
48The sky itself turned black Ibid.
48Rush adhered to an old-fashioned Weigley et al., Philadelphia, pages 184–85.
48A few doctors who were more familiar with tropical diseases Ibid., pages 185–87.
48But the disease ran rampant Ibid., pages 187–88.
49When he couldn’t find work as a weaver Hunter, The Life and Letters of Alexander Wilson, page 64.
49Philadelphia was then Weigley et al., Philadelphia, page 208.
49Built on an orderly grid Ibid., pages 208–21.
49It was twice as wide de Montule, Travels in America, page 25.
49Every inn and hotel in the city Ibid., page 24.
49By day the streets were clean Weigley et al., Philadelphia, page 220.
49Wilson said that coming to America Wilson to an anonymous Paisley friend, 1796. In Hunter, The Life and Letters of Alexander Wilson, page 152.
49No matter what a man’s occupation Wilson to an anonymous Paisley friend, probably in 1795. Ibid.
49“When I look round me here” Wilson to an anonymous Paisley friend, 1796. Ibid.
50After a few months Hunter, The Life and Letters of Alexander Wilson, page 64.
50Having little education Ibid., pages 65–66.
50He found his neighbors pleasant and honest Wilson to his father, August 22, 1798. Ibid., pages 153–58. A sharp observer of odd habits and sour moods in others, Wilson’s own depressive personality was rarely far below the surface. He closed this letter home as follows: “May providence continue to bless you with Health, Peace, and Content, and when the Tragic-Comic scene of Life is over, may all meet in regions of Bliss and Immortality. I am, till Death, Dear Father, Your truly affectionate son.”
50Mallards, redheads, teal Cantwell, Alexander Wilson, pages 94–95.
51It began with blue-winged teal Wilson, American Ornithology, vol. III, page 205.
51Although the birds were wary Ibid.
51Canada geese—which were shot Ibid., pages 175–81.
51Hunters had to conceal themselves Ibid.
51The duck waters around Philadelphia Ibid., pages 219–25.
51As early as 1727 Miller, Early American Waterfowling, page 79.
52On moonlit nights Wilson, American Ornithology, vol. III, pages 219–25.
52The hunter—also dressed in white Miller, Early American Waterfowling, page 101.
