PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 9*) 



tire continent, including 143 species; not systematically arranged, 

 it is true, but perhaps as scientific in its construction as was pos- 

 sible at that time, even had its author been trained in the school 

 of Linnaeus. 



Clavigero's dissertations are well worthy of the attention of 

 naturalists even of the present day. His essay upon the manner 

 in which the continent of America was peopled with living 

 forms, shows a remarkable appreciation of the difficulties in the 

 way of the solution of this still unsolved problem. The position 

 taken by its author is not unlike that held by zoogeographers 

 of to-day, in considering it necessary to bridge with land the 

 waters between Asia and Northwestern America, and Africa and 

 South America.* In his first "Dissertation of the Animals of 

 Mexico " he combats the prevailing European views as to the in- 

 feriority of the soil and climate of the New World and the de- 

 generacy of its inhabitants, engaging in the same battle in which 

 fought also Harriott, Acosta, and Jefferson. 



Clavigero's contributions to archaeology and ethnology are ex- 

 tensive and valuable, and we can but admit that at the time of 

 the issue of his " Storia Antica" no work concerning America 

 had been printed in English which was equally valuable. 



Although in his formal discussion of the natural history of 

 Mexico he follows closely the nomenclature and arrangement 

 of Hernandez, there are many important original observations 

 inserted. I will instance only the notes on the mechanism of 

 the poison-gland and fang of the rattlesnake, the biographies 

 of the possum, the coyote and the tapir, and the Tuza or 

 pouched rat, the mocking-bird, the chegoe and the cochineal 

 insect. Clavigero states that Father Inamma, a Jesuit mission- 

 ary of California, has made many experiments upon snakes 

 which serve to confirm those made by Mead upon vipers. 



To the post-revolutionary period belongs Dr. Manasseh Cutler, 



* See similar speculation in George Scot's Model of the Government of 

 the Province of East New Jersey in America. Edinburgh, 1685. 



