Among the scores of men who have devoted their talents to natural science, Linnæus and Wilson are not the least conspicuous, and they bore a likeness to each other in the obscurity of their origin. The first was the son of a Pastor, who lived in a village of Sweden, and partly sustained his family by cultivating a few beds of earth. The manse (to use a word familiar in Scotland,) has more than once been the birth place of genius, as Thomson, Armstrong, and the translator of the Lusiad could have testified. The latter was descended of a line of peasantry--but they both evinced that science has palms to bestow, on all by whom they shall be nobly attempted and fairly won, whilst she leaves it to kings to adorn the undeserving with hereditary titles. They both appear to have lived for a time out of their element, for the one had well nigh been sent to the awl, whilst the other was a weaver in Paisley. But the taste of Linnæus was early formed, whilst that of the ornithologist was not developed, until comparatively late in life. The biography of the Swede is full of incidents to show that his passion for plants took its rise in infancy, and grew with his years. The circumstances of his father being unexpectedly improved, the new residence of the Pastor was embellished by a garden, and though gardening had been his business, it now became an amusement. When the parent was employed among his plants, the son was seen by his side, drawing from paternal instruction, the elements of that science in which he was destined to excel. But the Ornithologist betrayed no early predilection for the branch of knowledge to which he subsequently became devoted. It was not until he had expatriated himself, and killed for his own sustenance, one of our forest birds--that the high resolve was formed of consecrating himself to the investigation of the feathered tribes. There is something striking in this event. An exile from Scotland, driven by poverty to seek an asylum on our shores, not knowing to what destiny his steps were tending, is reminded by an incident of the claims of science on his personal services. He had seen the birds of his own country, which Grahame had celebrated in one of his poems; but it is probable that the dishevelled plumage of the one alluded to deeply affected his mind. To an accident we owe a series of galvanic experiments, and the discovery of the law of gravitation; and if this be so, it is not to be wondered at, that to an event seemingly unimportant we should owe the enlargement of Ornithology.