PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 71 



The Pere Jean Baptiste Labat, visited the West Indies as a 

 missionary early in the eighteenth century, and " Nouveau Voy 

 age aux Isles de PAmerique," printed in Paris, 1722, is very full 

 of interesting and copious details of natural history. 



The Pere Laval, visited Louisiana, and published in Paris, 

 1728, his " Voyage de la Louisiane." 



M. LePage DuPratz followed, in 1758, with his " Histoire de 

 la Louisiane,"* full of geographical, biological, and anthropolog 

 ical observations upon the lower valley of the Mississippi, and 

 Captain Bossu, of the French Marines, also published a book 

 upon the same region,f translated into English in 1771 by John 

 Rembold Forster, whose notes gave to the work its only value. 

 These men are all catalogued with the seventeenth century nat 

 uralists because they were of the old school of general observers 

 and only indirectly contributed to the progress of systematic 

 zoology. 



Charles Plumier [b. 1646, d. 1704] was sent thrice by the King 

 of France to the Antilles during the latter years of the seven 

 teenth century. He published three magnificently illustrated 

 works upon the plants of America,! and left an extensive collec 

 tion of notes and drawings of animals and plants, many of which 

 have proved of value to naturalists of recent years. His colored 

 drawings of fishes were of great service to Cuvier in the prepara 

 tion of his great work upon ichthyology, and in some instances 

 species were founded upon them. 



The Dutch. There were few lovers of nature among the col 

 onists of Manhattan, and with the exception of certain names 

 which have clung to well-known animals, such as the mossbunker 

 and weakfish, naturalists have little to remind them of the days 

 of Van Twiller and Stuyvesant. Van Der Donck, in 1659, de- 



* Paris, 1758. 



f Nouveaux Voyages aux Indes Occidentals, etc., Paris: 1768. 

 % 1693. Nova Plantarum Americanarum Genera, 1703. Traite* de Fou- 

 ge*res d'Ame"rique, 1705. 



