PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 75 



" The Zoology of the Middle Ages " and " the period of System- 

 atic Classification." Students of science had ceased to compile 

 endless commentaries on the works of Aristotle and had begun to 

 record their own observations and thoughts, to gather new facts 

 and materials, which were to serve as a basis for the systematic 

 work for their successors. 



The greatest names of the day among naturalists were those of 

 Ray, Tournefort, Lister. Jonston, Goedart. Redi, Willughby, 

 Swammerdam, Sloane, Jung, and Morrison ; names not often 

 referred to at the present day, but worthy of our recollection 

 and veneration, for they were men of a new era — the pioneers 

 in systematic zoology and botany. 



Among the earliest representatives of the new school in 

 North America were Banister, Clayton, Mitchell, and Garden. 

 John Banister, a clergyman of the Church of England, emi- 

 grated to Virginia before 166S, and in addition to his clerical 

 duties applied himself assiduously to the study of natural history. 

 He was a disciple and also, no doubt, a pupil of the great Eng- 

 lish naturalist, John Ray, who called him, in his Historia 

 Plantarum, " erudissimus vir et consummatissimus Botanicus," 

 and corresponded also with Lister, and Compton, Bishop of Lon- 

 don. He was the first to observe intelligently the mollusks and 

 insects of North America. In a paper communicated to the 

 Royal Society in 1693 he refers to drawings of ten or twelve 

 kinds of land snails and six of fresh-water mussels. The draw- 

 ings were not published, nor were the notes, excejDt those in ref- 

 erence to the circulation of a species of snail.* 



He sent to Petiver, in 1680, a collection of 52 species of 

 insects, his observations upon which, with notes by Petiver, 

 were a few years later communicated to the Royal Society. f 



*Phil. Trans., xvii, 1693, pp. 671-672. See also Trans. Linnsean Soc, 

 vii, p. 227. 



t Some Observations concerning Insects made by Mr. Johti Banister in 

 Virginia, A. D. /6S0, with Remarks on them by Mr. yames Petiver, &c. 

 Phil. Trans., xxii, 1701, pp. 807-814. 



