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 our 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," 



