60 BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 



poesy is the " squuncke," which he classified among the u beasts 

 of offence." This seems to be the first use of the name. 



In the second part of Wood's book the Indians are discussed, 

 and a very creditable vocabulary is given. 



Most admirable work was now being done among the Indians 

 by some of the colonial clergymen. Chief among them was the 

 Rev. John Eliot, [b. 1604, d. 1690], who, during a residence of 

 more than half a century at Roxbury, mastered the language of 

 the Massachusetts branch of the great Algonquin tribe, and pub 

 lished his grammars and translations. He was a graduate of Jesus 

 College, Cambridge, and came to Massachusetts in 1631. The 

 Rev. Abraham Peirson, one of the founders of the colony at 

 Newark, during his residence in New England made valuable 

 investigations upon the language of the Quiripi or Quinnipiac 

 Indians of the New Haven Colony. The extensive bibliography 

 of which Mr. Pilling has recently published advance sheets gives 

 an excellent idea of the attention which American linguistics have 

 since received. 



That very eminent colonial statesman, John Winthrop, the 

 younger, the first Governor of Connecticut, [b. 1587, d. 1649], 

 stood high in the esteem of English men of science, and was in 

 vited by the newly founded Royal Society, of which he was a 

 fellow, " to take upon himself the charge of being the chief cor 

 respondent in the West, as Sir Philiberto Vernatti was in the 

 East Indies." The Secretary of the Royal Society said of him : 

 " His name, had he put it to his writings, would have been as 

 universally known as the Boyles, the Wilkins's, and the Olden- 

 burghs, and been handed down to us with similar applause." * 



Governor Winthrop's name occurs from time to time in the 

 Philosophical Transactions, and it was to him that science was 

 indebted for its first knowledge of the genus Astrophyton. 



John Winthrop, F. R. S., [b. 1606, d. 1676], son of the last, 



*Dr. Cromwell Mortimer in the Dedication of vol. xl, Philosophical 

 Transactions. 



