44 BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 



II. 



Although Harriott was the first who described the natural char 

 acteristics of North America, it would not be proper to ignore 

 the fact that the first scientific exploration of the western continent 

 was accomplished by Spaniards and Frenchmen. 



Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes, the first historian of 

 the New World, [b. 1478, d. 1557], was an Asturian of noble 

 birth, who began life as a page in the palace of Ferdinand and 

 Isabella. He saw Columbus at Burgos on his second return from 

 America in 1496. He came over in 1514 to Santo Domingo, 

 having been appointed inspector of gold-smelting, and was sub 

 sequently governor of that island and royal historiographer of the 

 Indies. In 1525 he transmitted to Charles V. his " Sumario de 

 la Natural Historia de las Indias," printed at Toledo two years 

 later, and in 1535 began the publication of his u Historia General 

 y Natural de las Indias," a task which was finally completed only 

 thirty years ago by the Spanish Royal Academy of History. 



Las Casas said that Oviedo's books were " as full of lies almost 

 as pages," but whatever may have been his methods in the dis 

 cussion of history and politics, he seems, in his descriptions, tc 

 have been both minute and accurate. Among the American ani 

 mals which he was first to mention was the tapir or dant *' of 

 the bignesse of a meane mule, without homes, ash-coloured," 

 and the churchia, evidently a species of Didelphys, allied to our 

 possum. This was the first notice of any member of the great 

 group of marsupial mammals. I quote a portion of the descrip 

 tion in Oviedo's " Sumario," employing the quaint phraseology 

 of Purchas's translation : 



" The Churchia is as bigge as a small Conie, tawnie, sharpe- 

 snowted, dog-toothed, long-tayled and eared like a Rat. They 

 do great harm to Hennes, killing sometimes twenty or more at 

 once to sucke their blonde : And if they then have young shee 

 carrieth them with her in a bagge of skin under her belly, run- 



