76 BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 



Among them many familiar forms are recognizable — the mud- 

 wasp, seventeen -year locust, cimex, cock-roach, firefly, the 

 spring beetle (Elater), and the tobacco-moth. He appears to 

 have drawn and described several phases of the life history of 

 the ichneumon-fly. He had in his possession in 1686, and ex- 

 hihited to an English traveller, large bones and teeth of fossil 

 mammals from the interior of Virginia, the first of which we 

 have any record in North America.* 



It was as a botanist, however, that he was best known. He 

 made drawings of the rarer species, and transmitted these with 

 his notes and dried specimens to Compton and Ray. Banister's 

 " Catalogus Plantarum in Virginia observatarum," printed in 

 i6S6,f was the first systematic paper upon natural history which 

 emanated from America. In one of his botanical excursions, 

 about the year 1692, he visited the falls of the Roanoke, and, 

 slipping among the rocks, was killed. % 



Lawson, the historian of North CaiT>lina, writing at the begin- 

 ning of the next century, remarked : " Had not the ingenious Mr. 

 Banister (the greatest virtuoso we ever had on this continent) 

 been unfortunately taken out of this world, he would have given 

 the best account of the plants of America of any that ever yet 

 made such an attempt in these parts. "§ The memory of John 

 Banister is still cherished in Virginia, where his descendants are 

 numerous. || 



John Clayton was also an excellent representative of the new 

 school, and should not be confounded with the Rev. John Clayton 

 who visited America in 1685. John Clayton, the naturalist, as 



* Perhaps the Megalo?iyx yeffersonii, subsequently discovered. 



t In Ray"s Historia Plantarum. 



% His papers and collections were sent to the Bishop of London. The 

 plants are said to have passed into the hands of Sloane, and to be still 

 preserved in the British Museum. It would be interesting to know what 

 has become of his manuscripts. 



§ Lawson: History of North Carolina, Raleigh Ed., p. 134. 



|| See The Bland Papers and Slaughter's History of Bristol Parish, 

 1st and 2d editions. 



