102 BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 



American science in the colonial period, or even that of Europe 

 at the same time, had any features which are worthy of consid 

 eration. 



The naturalists whose names I have mentioned were the intel 

 lectual ancestors of the naturalists of to-day. Upon the founda 

 tions which they laid the superstructure of modern natural history 

 is supported. Without the encyclopaedists and explorers there 

 could have been no Ray, no Klein, no Linnaeus. Without the 

 systematists of the latter part of the eighteenth century the school 

 of comparative anatomists would never have arisen. Had Cuvier 

 and his disciples never lived there would have been no place for 

 the philosophic biologists of to-day. 



The spirit of the early naturalists may be tested by passages: 

 in their writings which show how well aware they were of the 

 imperfections of their work. Listen to what John Lawson, the 

 Carolina naturalist, wrote in the year 1700 : 



" The reptiles or smaller insects are too numerous to relate 

 here, this country affording innumerable quantities thereof; as 

 the flying stags with horns, beetles, butterflies, grasshoppers, 

 locust, and several hundreds of uncouth shapes, which in the 

 summer season are discovered here in Carolina, the description 

 of which requires a large volume, which is not my intent at pres 

 ent, besides, what the mountainous part of this land may hereaf 

 ter open to otir view, time and industry will discover, for we that 

 have settled but a small share of this large province cannot imag 

 ine, but there will be a great number of discoveries made by those 

 that shall come hereafter into the back part of this land, and 

 make enquiries therein, when, at least, we consider that the west 

 ward of Carolina is quite different in soil, air, weather, growth 

 of vegetables, and several animals, too, which we at present are 

 wholly strangers to, and seek for. As to a right knowledge 

 thereof, I say, when another age is come, the ingenious then in 

 being may stand upon the shoulders of those that went before 

 them, adding their own experiments to what was delivered down 

 to them by their predecessors, and then there will be something 

 towards a complete natural history, which, in these days, would 

 be no easy undertaking to any author that writes truly and com 

 pendiously as he ought to do." 



Herbert Spencer, in his essay on " The Genesis of Science," 



