Though he was never entirely able to divorce himself from his family's association with politics, Charles Lucien "Prince" Bonaparte lived a life in good part devoted to science. He was in fact quite an excellent zoologist, giving the majority of his attention over to the birds. Bonaparte first made his name in this direction by completing Wilson's American Ornithology after the latter's death, but while involved in that project he began to question many of Cuvier's conclusions regarding the systematic position of many other vertebrate groups. Using a wider range of criteria (including physiological and developmental traits), he suggested revisions in the placement of many major groups of all five vertebrate classes; many of these were adopted. His classifications also took into account zoogeographic data, and in turn his various lists, catalogs and conspectuses served to bring greater attention to the relations between geography and habit. His crowning achievement, the Conspectus generum avium, ended up the prized traveling companion of many a mid-nineteenth century field naturalist (Alfred Russel Wallace, for example, remarked on its great usefulness).