WILSON, James, the younger brother of the celebrated "Christopher North," was born in Paisley in 1795. The reputation of his elder brother, and his own modest and retiring disposition, have conspired to throw him into the shade, yet few names are more worthy of honour. Shortly after his birth his father died, and his mother in consequence removed with her family to Edinburgh, where her youngest son received his education. From his earliest years he exhibited a fondness for natural history, which prompted him in his many school-boy ramblings around Edinburgh to collect specimens of every variety of bird, beast, and insect that the neighbourhood afforded. This taste was of course developed by attending the lectures of Professor Jameson on natural history; and though he at a subsequent period went through the usual routine of training preparatory for the profession of a writer to the signet, his career in life had been already marked out as that of a naturalist. When only seventeen he became a member of the Wernerian Society, and when twenty he began to read communications on the natural history of the country. We are indebted to the pen of Lockhart for a description of his appearance and habits at this period. "He is a thin, pale, slender, contemplative-looking person, with hair of rather a dark colour, and extremely short-sighted. His voice is low, and his whole demeanour as still as can be imagined. . . . The parts of natural science of which he is fondest are ornithology and entomology—studies so delightful to every true lover of nature, that I suspect they are, in some measure, familiar to every poet who excels in depicting the manifestations and in tracing the spirit of beauty in the external universe. . . . I have never met with any man who seemed to possess a greater power of illustrating subjects of natural history by quotations from writers of all kinds, and in particular from the poets. Nothing could be more refreshing than to hear some minute details about birds and insects, interrupted and illuminated by a fragment of grand melancholy music from the Paradise Lost, or the Excursion." (Peter's Letters to his Kingsfolk, 1819.) On the restoration of peace after the long wars with Napoleon, he visited the continent, making a tour through Holland, Belgium (where he visited the field of the then recent fight of Waterloo), Germany, and Switzerland; and he has preserved in a lively and well written journal, of which parts have been published, his first impression of the scenes which he then beheld. Shortly after this tour he went to Paris to purchase for the University of Edinburgh the famous ornithological collection of Dufresne; and on his return he found employment in contributing to Blackwood's Magazine, which had been recently projected. His weak health obliged him to spend the winter of 1820 in Italy, where he recovered his strength; and shortly after his return, he married and established himself at Woodville, in the vicinity of Edinburgh, in a delightful cottage surrounded by a little patch of ground which his skill converted into a paradise. Here, in the enjoyment of domestic happiness, with all the conveniences of proximity to town and all the pleasures of rural life, he devoted himself to the prosecution of the studies in which he so much delighted, varying and relieving his toils by an occasional visit to some of his numerous friends, a fishing-expedition, or a trip in a yacht round the coasts of Scotland. On the issue of the seventh edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, he furnished all the articles on natural history, including ENTOMOLOGY, HELMINTHOLOGY, MAMMALIA, ORNITHOLOGY, REPTILES, and SERPENTS, &c. These articles taken together amount, in the extended scale in which they appear in the present edition of the work, most of them extended and revised by himself, to upwards of 900 pages, a quantity of matter equal to at least six ordinary octavo volumes. All these articles are distinguished by the peculiar grace of
their style, so different from the dry and repulsive air which usually characterizes works of science, and by the felicity of the poetical illustrations which are interspersed. His calm and pleasant life presents no incidents deserving of special note, if we except his declination of the chair of natural history in the University of Edinburgh, which was offered to him on the lamented death of Professor Forbes in 1854, an office for which every one but himself deemed him eminently competent. He died in May 1856, with the calm composure of a Christian who had nothing to dread in the future. In addition to the works mentioned above, he wrote A Voyage round the Coasts of Scotland and the Isles; Illustrations of Scripture, by an animal painter; and several articles in Blackwood, and the North British and Quarterly Reviews. A pleasant memoir of him was published in 1859, by Dr Hamilton of London.