PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 67 



All the early voyagers were striving for the discovery of a 

 western passage to India, and the West Indies, so-called, were 

 considered simply a stage on the journey towards the East 

 Indies. It is not strange, therefore, that writers should often 

 have failed to distinguish the faunal relations of the animals 

 which they described. Many curious paradoxes in nomenclature 

 have thus arisen — Cassis uiadagascarieiisis* for instance; a very 

 misleading name for a common West Indian mollusk. 



V. 



The seventeenth centurv bears upon its roll the names of many 

 explorers besides those of English origin who have already been 

 named. Within fiftv years of the time of Harriott and of the 

 planting of the colonv at Roanoke, the number and extent of the 

 European settlements in America had become very considerable. 

 Virginia and the New England plantations were growing popu- 

 lous and Maryland was fairly established. Insular colonies were 

 thriving at Newfoundland and Bermuda and on Barbados, and 

 elsewhere in the West Indies. 



Xew Spain and Florida marked the northern limits of the do- 

 main of the Spaniards, who had already overrun almost all of 

 South America. 



Xew France bounded Xew England on the north, and the 

 French were pushing their military posts and missionary stations 

 down into the Mississippi valley. 



The Dutch were established on Manhattan Island and else- 

 where in the surrounding country, and the Dutch West India 

 Company had already a foothold in Brazil and Guiana. A colony 

 of Scandinavians had been planted by the Swedish West India 

 Company near the present site of Philadelphia, and the forsaken 

 Danish colonies of Greenland were soon to be re-established. The 

 Portuguese had flourishing settlements in Brazil, for the possession 

 of which they were contending with the Dutch. 



Every European nation was represented in the great struggle 



